Mysterious misalignments between geomagnetic and stellar reference frames seen in CHAMP and Swarm satellite measurements

The orientation of a spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit can be determined accurately from either magnetic field measurements or star camera images. Ideally, the independently computed spacecraft attitudes should agree. However, we find that the German CHAMP and European Space Agency triple-satellite Swarm geomagnetic satellites exhibit consistent misalignments between the stellar and geomagnetic reference frames, which oscillate with the local time of the orbit. Having an amplitude of 20 arcsec, these oscillations are more than an order of magnitude larger than the stability of the optical bench, which cohosts the magnetometers and star cameras. The misalignments could originate either from the magnetometer or star camera measurements. On one hand, as-yet-unknown external magnetic field contributions could appear as a rotation of the geomagnetic reference frame. On the other hand, the observed misalignments agree in amplitude and phase with the effects of stellar aberration, caused by the movement of the star cameras relative to the light rays emitted by the stars. This is surprising because stellar aberration is allegedly already corrected for by the star image processing system. Resolving these mysterious misalignments is key to fulfilling the measurement accuracy requirements and science objectives of the ongoing Swarm mission. If caused by stellar aberration, fully correcting for this effect could significantly improve the attitude accuracy not only of CHAMP and Swarm, but also of several other past and ongoing scientific satellite missions.