A system (18) includes: a) A vehicle (12) includes an attitude or angular
velocity control system (38), a plurality of star trackers or star
sensors (22) each having a field of view (28); b) a memory (30) having a
star catalog (32), an allocated area for a star pair catalog (58) and a
reference table (56) stored therein; and c) a processor (24) coupled to
the attitude or angular velocity control system (38), the star trackers
or star sensors (22), and the memory (30). The processor (24) populates
the star pair catalog (58), using the method described herein. The
processor (24) then periodically determines the vehicle inertial attitude
or angular velocity or sensor alignment, based, in part, on the star pair
catalog (58) and reference table (56). The novel ability of the software
to autonomously populate the star pair catalog (58) allows users to avoid
uploading a large amount of data, and the problems associated with such
an upload.