Related papers: Interplanetary spacecraft navigation using pulsars

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…

We discuss the possibility of an autonomous navigation system for spacecraft that is based on pulsar timing data. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that are observable as variable celestial sources of electromagnetic radiation.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The exploration of interstellar space will require autonomous navigation systems that do not rely on tracking from the Earth. Here I develop a method to determine the 3D position and 3D velocity of a spacecraft in deep space using a star…

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…

At present, there is a great worldwide interest in the development of technologies that allow information about the X-ray emission from pulsating cosmic sources to be used to obtain navigation solutions for deep-space spacecraft. In this…

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…

Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are short-period pulsars that are distinguished from "normal" pulsars, not only by their short period, but also by their very small spin-down rates and high probability of being in a binary system. These…

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…

The temporal stability of millisecond pulsars is remarkable, rivaling even some terrestrial atomic clocks at long timescales. Using this property, we show that millisecond pulsars distributed in the galactic neighborhood form an ensemble of…

The PULSE@Parkes project has been designed to monitor the rotation of radio pulsars over time spans of days to years. The observations are obtained using the Parkes 64-m and 12-m radio telescopes by Australian and international high school…

Binary and Millisecond pulsars have a great deal to teach us about stellar evolution and are invaluable tools for tests of relativistic theories of gravity. Our understanding of these objects has been transformed by large-scale surveys that…

We report the discovery using the Parkes radio telescope of binary millisecond pulsars in four clusters for which no associated pulsars were previously known. The four pulsars have pulse periods lying between 3 and 6 ms. All are in circular…

The phenomenal rotational stability of millisecond pulsars allows them to be used as precise celestial clocks. An array of these pulsars can be exploited to search for correlated perturbations in their pulse times of arrival due to…

With a collecting area of 70 000 m^2, the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will allow for great advances in pulsar astronomy. We have performed simulations to estimate the number of previously unknown pulsars FAST will…

Parallax measurements of pulsars allow for accurate measurements of the interstellar electron density and contribute to accurate tests of general relativity using binary systems. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be an ideal instrument…