Star tracker and LIDAR-based night-time planetary navigation

Planetary navigation on planets with no global positioning infrastructure is a challenge which has been overcome in the past by using day-light dependent sensors. This thesis develops a platform to test a star tracker and LIDAR based night-time navigation system. Testing of the system confirmed its feasibility despite not meeting target performance. Global position was acquired to within five kilometres using the star tracker and refined to within 23% of true motion for a 13 m path using the LIDAR.