Principles of X-ray Navigation

Hanson, John

doi:10.2172/877425

Cited by 41 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Given that the baseline length is short, the measurement error is expected to be small. Assuming that the pulsar direction error is 1 milli-arcsecond (mas), corresponding to the current level of pulsar position observation accuracy (Hanson, 1996) and the baseline length is 60 000 km, the measurement error attributable to the pulsar direction error is only 0·3 m, compared to the measurement error of a hundred meters using absolute pulsar-based measurement (Sheikh, 2006). The relative pulsar-based measurement largely weakens the pulsar direction error for the measurement error.…”

Section: A U To N O M O U S P O S I T I Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Positioning of Satellite Constellations via X-ray Pulsar Measurements

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A novel autonomous positioning approach based on X-ray pulsars is proposed in this paper. First, the principles of the pulsar-based measurement model and the inter-satellite range model in the autonomous positioning of satellite constellations are presented. The observability of the pulsar-based measurement model is then shown. Second, the autonomous positioning algorithms, including measurement models and orbital dynamics models, are formulated using an unscented Kalman filter to estimate the position vectors of satellites. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed measurement scheme compared with an inter-satellite range scheme is illustrated by numerical simulation. The results show that the proposed approach can keep the satellite state convergent, and achieve position accuracies of 2 m. The proposed scheme provides a promising approach for autonomous absolute positioning of constellation systems by using X-ray pulsars.2. X-ray Pulsars. 3. Inter-satellite Range. 4. Satellite Constellations.

show abstract

Section: A U To N O M O U S P O S I T I Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Positioning of Satellite Constellations via X-ray Pulsar Measurements

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These instruments, though, have some error and due to the integration process, these will always increase over time. The use of X-ray navigation is also being research for deep space missions 4,5,6 .This technique uses observations of high energy pulsars with highly detailed pulse arrival models, to capture the difference in arrival between that measured and at a reference location. This information can be used to compute a navigation fix, but requires large detectors with a long integration time to capture enough data that can then processed through complex folding algorithms to determine the pulse arrival time and phase.…”

Section: A Navigation Techniques and Current Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Design of a Communication-based Deep Space Navigation Network

Anzalone

Chuang

2012

AIAA SPACE 2012 Conference &Amp; Exposition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the need grows for increased autonomy and position knowledge accuracy to support missions beyond Earth orbit, engineers must push and develop more advanced navigation sensors and systems that operate independent of Earth-based analysis and processing. Several spacecraft are approaching this problem using inter-spacecraft radiometric tracking and onboard autonomous optical navigation methods. This paper proposes an alternative implementation to aid in spacecraft position fixing. The proposed method Network-Based Navigation technique takes advantage of the communication data being sent between spacecraft and between spacecraft and ground control to embed navigation information. The navigation system uses these packets to provide navigation estimates to an onboard navigation filter to augment traditional ground-based radiometric tracking techniques. As opposed to using digital signal measurements to capture inherent information of the transmitted signal itself, this method relies on the embedded navigation packet headers to calculate a navigation estimate. This method is heavily dependent on clock accuracy and the initial results show the promising performance of a notional system. Nomenclature

show abstract

“…Navigation using X-ray pulsars [3][4][5] is regarded as a revolutionary technology providing autonomous spacecraft navigation capability in the whole solar system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mission Overview and Initial Observation Results of the X-Ray Pulsar Navigation-I Satellite

Zhang¹,

Peng²,

Huang³

et al. 2017

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The newly launched X-ray pulsar navigation-I (XPNAV-1) is an experimental satellite of China that is designed for X-ray pulsar observation. This paper presents the initial observation results and aims to recover the Crab pulsar's pulse profile to verify the Xray instrument's capability of observing pulsars in space. With the grazing-incidence focusing type instrument working at the soft X-ray band (0.5-10 keV), up to 162 segments of observations of the Crab pulsar are fulfilled, and more than 5 million X-ray events are recorded. Arrival times of photons are corrected to the solar system barycentre, and the 33 ms pulse period is sought out for Crab. Epoch folding of all the corrected photon times generates the refined pulse profile of Crab. The characteristic two-peak profile proves that the Crab pulsar has been clearly seen, so that the conclusion is made that XPNAV-1's goal of being capable of observing pulsars is achieved.

show abstract

Principles of X-ray Navigation

Cited by 41 publications

References 0 publications

Autonomous Positioning of Satellite Constellations via X-ray Pulsar Measurements

Autonomous Positioning of Satellite Constellations via X-ray Pulsar Measurements

Conceptual Design of a Communication-based Deep Space Navigation Network

Mission Overview and Initial Observation Results of the X-Ray Pulsar Navigation-I Satellite

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About