Related papers: Lost in space? Relativistic interstellar navigatio…
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…
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…
High-accuracy astrometry permits the determination of not only stellar tangential motion, but also the component along the line-of-sight. Such non-spectroscopic (i.e. astrometric) radial velocities are independent of stellar atmospheric…
As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft exits the Solar System bound for interstellar space, it has traveled so far that the nearest stars have shifted markedly from their positions seen from Earth. We demonstrated this by imaging the Proxima…
Under certain conditions, stellar radial velocities can be determined from astrometry, without any use of spectroscopy. This enables us to identify phenomena, other than the Doppler effect, that are displacing spectral lines. The change of…
The process of identifying stars is integral toward stellar based orientation determination in spacecraft. Star identification involves matching points in an image of the sky with stars in an astronomical catalog. A unified framework for…
Global navigation satellite systems use appropriate satellite constellations to get the coordinates of an user -close to Earth- in an almost inertial reference system. We have simulated both GPS and GALILEO constellations. Uncertainties in…
Cosmology with large interferometric telescopes is a rich and largely unexplored subject, involving three types of measurement: astrometric measurement of absolute distances and proper motions, dispersions of relative proper motions, and…
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…
Accurate distances to stars and galaxies allow for significant tests of stellar evolution, galaxy formation and evolution and cosmology. NASA's Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will obtain precision [1-30 microarcsec] astrometry for…
In this article, we describe a very simple technique to locate naked-eye planets in the sky, to an accuracy of $\sim 1^{\circ}$. The procedure, comprising just three steps, involves very simple manual calculations for planetary orbits…
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.…
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…
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…
Space astrometry is capable of sub-microarcsecond measurements of star positions. A hundred visits over several years could yield relative astrometric precision of ~0.1 uas, below the astrometric signature (0.3 uas) of a Sun-Earth system at…
The problem of determination of the orbital velocity of an astrometric satellite from its own observational data is studied. It is well known that data processing of microarcsecond-level astrometric observations imposes very stringent…
In this paper, we propose novel methods to increase total luminosity and decrease error propagation during subluminal or luminal interstellar transits by navigation with star maps. We demonstrate with theoretical and simulation models in…
The Gaia satellite will observe the positions and velocities of over a billion Milky Way stars. In the early data releases, the majority of observed stars do not have complete 6D phase-space information. In this Letter, we demonstrate the…
In order to understand the appropriate field of view (FOV) size of celestial automatic navigation systems for surface ships, we investigate the variations of measurement accuracy of star position and probability of successful star…
In normal observation procedures, the position of the observer is specified by GPS and celestial positions of an object will be calculated. But in some situations, like small zenith angle FOVs, GPS doesn't work. Therefore in this study, the…