Observability Analysis for Spacecraft Attitude Determination using a Single Temperature Sensor*

We consider the problem of spacecraft attitude determination using temperature data. Common algorithms fuse multiple temperature measurements to reconstruct the attitude. However, a single sensor already contains a lot of information due to the temperature dynamics inherent to the nonlinear structure. In this work a rigorous observability analysis is carried out to determine the configurations in which the combination of a single temperature sensor with angular velocity measurements is sufficient for estimating the entire attitude. We evaluate the observability properties of the different configurations and give recommendations for the best configurations.