Related papers: Star-based Navigation in the Outer Solar System
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
The surge of deep-space probes makes it unsustainable to navigate them with standard radiometric tracking. Self-driving interplanetary satellites represent a solution to this problem. In this work, a full vision-based navigation algorithm…
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…
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…
The traditional celestial navigation system (CNS) is used the moon, stars, and planets as celestial guides. Then the star tracker (i.e. track one star or planet or angle between it) and star sensor (i.e. sense many star simultaneous) be…
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…
We present a method for measuring the Sun's motion using the proper motions of Galactic halo star streams. The method relies on the fact that the motion of the stars perpendicular to a stream from a low-mass progenitor is close to zero when…
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 microhertz frequency band of gravitational waves probes the merger of supermassive black holes as well as many other gravitational wave phenomena. However, space-interferometry methods that use test masses would require further…
Small body exploration is a pertinent challenge due to low gravity environments and strong sensitivity to perturbations like Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP). Thus, autonomous methods are being developed to enable safe navigation and control…
Two new interplanetary technologies have advanced in the past decade to the point where they may enable exciting, affordable missions that reach further and faster deep into the outer regions of our solar system: (i) small and capable…
For distant stars, as observed by the NASA Kepler satellite, parallax information is currently of fairly low quality and is not complete. This limits the precision with which the absolute sizes of the stars and their potential transiting…
Context. The Gaia mission has opened up a new era for the precise astrometry of stars, thus revolutionizing our understanding of the Milky Way. However, beyond a few kiloparseconds from the Sun, parallax measurements become less reliable,…
The POLAR Investigation of the Sun (POLARIS) mission uses a combination of a gravity assist and solar sail propulsion to place a spacecraft in a 0.48 AU circular orbit around the Sun with an inclination of 75 degrees with respect to solar…