Related papers: Pulsar Navigation in the Solar System
We have investigated the pulse shape evolution of the Crab pulsar emission in the hard X-ray domain of the electromagnetic spectrum. In particular, we have studied the alignment of the Crab pulsar phase profiles measured in the hard X-rays…
Detecting the X-ray radialization of pulsars and obtaining the photons' time of arrival are the foundation steps in autonomous navigation via X-ray pulsar measurement. The precision of a pulse' s time of arrival is mainly decided by the…
Pulsars are the most stable macroscopic clocks found in nature. Spinning with periods as short as a few milliseconds, their stability can supersede that of the best atomic clocks on Earth over timescales of a few years. Stable clocks are…
The Crab nebula is so far the only celestial object with a statistically significant detection in soft x-ray polarimetry, a window that has not been explored in astronomy since the 1970s. However, soft x-ray polarimetry is expected to be a…
Millisecond and binary pulsars are the most stable astronomical standards of frequency. They can be applied to solving a number of problems in astronomy and time-keeping metrology including the search for a stochastic gravitational wave…
Evidence for a low-frequency gravitational-wave background using pulsar timing arrays has generated recent interest into its underlying contributing sources. However, multiple investigations have seen that the significance of the evidence…
Orbit determination of spacecraft in orbit has been mostly dependent on either GNSS satellite signals or ground station telemetry. Both methods present their limitations, however: GNSS signals can only be used effectively in earth orbit,…
The Artemis program requires robotic and crewed lunar rovers for resource prospecting and exploitation, construction and maintenance of facilities, and human exploration. These rovers must support navigation for 10s of kilometers (km) from…
PODIUM is a compact spacecraft navigation unit, currently being designed to provide interplanetary missions with autonomous position and velocity estimations. The unit will make use of Pulsar X-ray observations to measure the distance and…
X-ray polarization from the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) provides an important new probe of the geometry of the pulsar emission zone and of particle acceleration in the surrounding pulsar wind nebula (PWN). However, with IXPE's…
Time-resolved polarisation measurements of pulsars offer an unique insight into the geometry of their emission regions. Such measure\ ments provide observational constraints on the different models proposed for the pulsar emission…
Pulsar search with time-domain observation is very computationally expensive and data volume will be enormous with the next generation telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array. We apply artificial neural networks (ANNs), a machine…
The trajectory of an interplanetary spacecraft can be used to test gravitation in the Solar System. Its determination relies on radio tracking and is limited by the uncertainty on the spacecraft non-gravitational acceleration. The addition…
We use four observations with the European VLBI network to measure the first precise radio parallax of the Crab Pulsar. We found two in-beam extragalactic sources just outside the Crab Nebula, with one bright enough to use as a background…
Small body exploration is a pertinent challenge due to low gravity environments and strong sensitivity to perturbations like Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP). Thus, autonomous methods are being developed to enable safe navigation and control…
Many physically motivated extensions to general relativity (GR) predict significant deviations in the properties of spacetime surrounding massive neutron stars. We report the measurement of a 2.01 +/- 0.04 solar mass pulsar in a 2.46-hr…
Pulsar studies in the recent years have shown, more than others, to have benefited from a multi-wavelength approach. The INAF - Astronomical Observatory in Cagliari (INAF-OAC) is a growing facility with a young group devoted to pulsar and…
The resurgence of lunar operations requires advancements in cislunar navigation and Space Situational Awareness (SSA). Challenges associated to these tasks have created an interest in autonomous planning, navigation, and tracking…
Electromagnetic fields surrounding pulsars may source coherent ultralight axion signals at the known rotational frequencies of the neutron stars, which can be detected by laboratory experiments (e.g., pulsarscopes). As a promising case…
Neutron stars generate powerful winds of relativistic particles that form bright synchrotron nebulae around them. Polarimetry provides a unique insight into the geometry and magnetic configuration of the wind, but high-energy measurements…