Related papers: Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation Based on Pulsar T…
An external reference system suitable for deep space navigation can be defined by fast spinning and strongly magnetized neutron stars, called pulsars. Their beamed periodic signals have timing stabilities comparable to atomic clocks and…
Pulsars are natural cosmic clocks. On long timescales they rival the precision of terrestrial atomic clocks. Using a technique called pulsar timing, the exact measurement of pulse arrival times allows a number of applications, ranging from…
Usually, positions of spacecraft on interplanetary or deep space missions are determined by radar tracking from ground stations, a method by which uncertainty increases with distance from Earth. As an alternative, a spacecraft equipped with…
The X-ray Navigation and Autonomous position Verification (XNAV) is tested which use the Crab pulsar under the Space Test Program that use starlight refraction. It provide the way that the spacecraft could autonomously determine its…
We demonstrate how observations of pulsars can be used to help navigate a spacecraft travelling in the solar system. We make use of archival observations of millisecond pulsars from the Parkes radio telescope in order to demonstrate the…
Current space missions primarily depend on Earth-based Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) systems involving human-in-the-loop operations. X-ray pulsar-based navigation offers a promising alternative by using the very precise periodic…
Pulsars have at least two impressive applications. First, they can be used as highly accurate clocks, comparable in stability to atomic clocks; secondly, a small subset of pulsars, millisecond X-ray pulsars, provide all the necessary…
A general approach to the problem of positioning by means of pulsars or other pulsating sources located at infinity is described. The counting of the pulses for a set of different sources whose positions in the sky and periods are assumed…
Recent advances with space navigation technologies developed by NASA in space-based atomic clocks and pulsar X-ray navigation combined with past successes in autonomous navigation using optical imaging, brings to the forefront the need to…
Pulsar timing is a technique that uses the highly stable spin periods of neutron stars to investigate a wide range of topics in physics and astrophysics. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use sets of extremely well-timed pulsars as a Galaxy-scale…
In order to show the principle viability of a recently proposed relativistic positioning method based on the use of pulsed signals from sources at infinity, we present an application example reconstructing the world-line of an idealized…
We present here a method for the relativistic positioning in spacetime based on the reception of pulses from sources of electromagnetic signals whose worldline is known. The method is based on the use of a four-dimensional grid covering the…
This paper investigates an autonomous navigation method for spacecraft operating in the outer solar system, up to 250 AU from the Sun, using the parallactic shifts of nearby stars. These measurements enable estimation of the spacecraft…
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…
Pulsar timing, i.e. the analysis of the arrival times of pulses from a pulsar, is a powerful tool in modern astrophysics. It allows us to measure the time delays of an electromagnetic signal caused by a number of physical processes as the…
Pulsars are unique astrophysical laboratories because of their clock-like timing precision, providing new ways to test general relativity and detect gravitational waves. One impediment to high-precision pulsar timing experiments is timing…
Highly precise pulsar timing is very important for understanding the nature of a neutron star, and it can even be used to detect gravitational waves. Unfortunately, the accuracy of the pulsar timing is seriously affected by the spin-down…
Pulsars have traditionally been used for research into fundamental physics and astronomy. In this paper, we investigate the expanding applications of radio pulsars in societal and industrial domains beyond their conventional scientific…
This article provides a review on X-ray pulsar-based navigation (XNAV). The review starts with the basic concept of XNAV, and briefly introduces the past, present and future projects concerning XNAV. This paper focuses on the advances of…
Pulsar timing is a process of iteratively fitting pulse arrival times to constrain the spindown, astrometric, and possibly binary parameters of a pulsar, by enforcing integer numbers of pulsar rotations between the arrival times. Phase…