Related papers: Characterization of Pulsar Sources for X-ray Navig…
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) presents an exciting new capability for exploring the modulation properties of X-ray emitting neutron stars, including large area, low background, extremely precise absolute event time…
The Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is an X-ray astrophysics payload that will be placed on the International Space Station. Its primary science goal is to measure with high accuracy the pulse profiles that arise from the…
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is an X-ray astrophysics payload on the International Space Station. It enables unprecedented high-precision timing of millisecond pulsars without the pulse broadening and delays due to…
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…
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 recent flight experiments with Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (\textit{NICER}) and \textit{Insight}-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (\textit{Insight}-HXMT) have demonstrated the feasibility of X-ray pulsar-based navigation…
The x-ray emission of hot spots on the surface of neutron stars is the prime target of the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). These x-ray pulse profiles not only encode information of the bulk properties of these stars,…
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…
Shemar et al. (2016) presented results based on the output of a feasibility study for the European Space Agency (ESA) on the use of X-ray pulsars for deep space navigation, a concept often referred to as 'XNAV'. Here we describe some of the…
The Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) is expected to launch in early 2017 and will gather X-ray data on neutron stars and other high-energy sources from a berth on the International Space Station. Its prime scientific goal…
We present the set of deep Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray timing observations of the nearby rotation-powered millisecond pulsars PSRs J0437-4715, J0030+0451, J1231-1411, and J2124-3358, selected as targets for…
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 this work, we report the in-orbit demonstration of X-ray pulsar navigation with Insight-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT), which was launched on Jun. 15th, 2017. The new pulsar navigation method 'Significance Enhancement of…
One very promising technique for measuring the dense matter Equation of State exploits hotspots that form on the neutron star surface due to the pulsar mechanism, accretion streams, or during thermonuclear explosions in the neutron star…
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 report on Bayesian estimation of the radius, mass, and hot surface regions of the massive millisecond pulsar PSR J0740$+$6620, conditional on pulse-profile modeling of Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer X-ray Timing Instrument…
Modeling energy-dependent X-ray pulse profiles from rotation-powered millisecond pulsars observed with NICER has emerged as a promising avenue for measuring neutron star radii and probing the equation of state of cold, ultra-dense matter.…
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…