Due to unavoidable factors, heavy-tailed noise appears in satellite attitude estimation. Traditional Kalman filter is prone to performance degradation and even filtering divergence when facing non-Gaussian noise. The existing robust algorithms have limited accuracy. To improve the attitude determination accuracy under non-Gaussian noise, we use the centered error entropy (CEE) criterion to derive a new filter named centered error entropy Kalman filter (CEEKF). CEEKF is formed by maximizing the CEE cost function. In the CEEKF algorithm, the prior state values are transmitted the same as the classical Kalman filter, and the posterior states are calculated by the fixed-point iteration method. The CEE EKF (CEE-EKF) algorithm is also derived to improve filtering accuracy in the case of the nonlinear system. We also give the convergence conditions of the iteration algorithm and the computational complexity analysis of CEEKF. The results of the two simulation examples validate the robustness of the algorithm we presented.
