Related papers: Lost in space? Relativistic interstellar navigatio…
Autonomous navigation is one of the main enabling technologies for future space missions. While conventional spacecraft are navigated through ground stations, their employment for deep-space CubeSats yields costs comparable to those of the…
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…
For the vast majority of stars in the second Gaia data release, reliable distances cannot be obtained by inverting the parallax. A correct inference procedure must instead be used to account for the nonlinearity of the transformation and…
We compute the locations of satellite galaxies in the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey using two sets of selection criteria and three sources of photometric data. Using the SuperCOSMOS r_F photometry, we find that the satellites are…
Precise Gaia measurements of positions, parallaxes, and proper motions provide an opportunity to calculate 3D positions and 2D velocities (i.e. 5D phase-space) of Milky Way stars. Where available, spectroscopic radial velocity (RV)…
An interstellar communication network benefits from relay nodes placed in the gravitational lenses of stars. The signal gains are of order $10^{9}$ with optimal alignment, allowing for GBits connections at kW power levels with meter-sized…
We study Milky Way kinematics using a sample of 18.8 million main-sequence stars with r<20 and proper-motion measurements derived from SDSS and POSS astrometry, including ~170,000 stars with radial-velocity measurements from the SDSS…
A selection of astrometric catalogues are presented in three tables for respectively positions, proper motions and trigonometric parallaxes. The tables contain characteristics of each catalogue showing the evolution in optical astrometry,…
The study of multiple extrasolar planetary systems has the opportunity to obtain constraints for the planetary masses and orbital inclinations via the detection of mutual perturbations. The analysis of precise radial velocity measurements…
Building and maintaining a catalog of resident space objects involves several tasks, ranging from observations to data analysis. Once acquired, the knowledge of a space object needs to be updated following a dedicated observing schedule.…
The precise radial velocity technique is a cornerstone of exoplanetary astronomy. Astronomers measure Doppler shifts in the star's spectral features, which track the line-of/sight gravitational accelerations of a star caused by the planets…
We present a new 3D map of interstellar dust reddening, covering three quarters of the sky (declinations greater than -30 degrees) out to a distance of several kiloparsecs. The map is based on high-quality stellar photometry of 800 million…
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…
From the tangential velocities of stars all over the sky, one can, in a statistical way, infer their 3D velocity distribution. An application to Hipparcos data reveals rich structure in the planar stellar motions: there are several moving…
The Breakthrough Starshot project aims to send centimeter-sized, gram-scale "StarChip" probes to Alpha Centauri at a speed of $\sim0.2c$. On the other hand, Zhang \& Li recently proposed that trans-relativistic cameras may be sent to any…
Interstellar radar is a potential intermediate step between passive observation of exoplanets and interstellar exploratory missions. Compared to passive observation, it has the traditional advantages of radar astronomy. It can measure…
We consider the problem of determining the Galaxy's gravitational potential from a star catalogue. We show that orbit-based approaches to this problem suffer from unacceptable numerical noise deriving from the use of only a finite number of…
Optical cameras are gaining popularity as the suitable sensor for relative navigation in space due to their attractive sizing, power and cost properties when compared to conventional flight hardware or costly laser-based systems. However, a…
High-resolution 3D maps of interstellar dust are critical for probing the underlying physics shaping the structure of the interstellar medium, and for foreground correction of astrophysical observations affected by dust. We aim to construct…
With the advent of optical interferometers that will be coming online in the next decade, radial velocity searches for extra-solar planets will be complemented by high angular resolution astrometric measurements. In this paper, we explore…