Interplanetary spacecraft navigation using pulsars

TL;DR

This paper explores using pulsar observations for spacecraft navigation within the solar system, demonstrating that regular measurements can achieve high-precision position and velocity estimates.

Contribution

It introduces a pulsar-based navigation method using archival data and realistic spacecraft observations, addressing practical issues like pulsar irregularities.

Findings

Position accuracy better than 20 km

Velocity measurement precision of about 0.1 m/s

Effective navigation possible with four pulsars every seven days

Abstract

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 effectiveness of the method and highlight issues, such as pulsar spin irregularities, which need to be accounted for. We show that observations of four millisecond pulsars every seven days using a realistic X-ray telescope on the spacecraft throughout a journey from Earth to Mars can lead to position determinations better than approx. 20km and velocity measurements with a precision of approx. 0.1m/s.