2017/12/11 by K. S. Wood, Paul S. Ray, Wood, Kent S. +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1712.03832
openalex publication_date 2017/12/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This chapter describes the development of X-ray Navigation at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) within its astrophysics research programs. The prospects for applications emerged from early discoveries of X-ray source classes and their properties. Starting around 1988 some NRL X-ray astronomy programs included navigation as one of the motivations. The USA experiment (1999) was the first flight payload with an explicit X-ray navigation theme. Subsequently, NRL has continued to work in this area through participation in DARPA and NASA programs. Throughout, the general concept of X-ray navigation (XRNAV) has been broad enough to encompass many different uses of X-ray source observations for attitude determination, position determination, and timekeeping. Pulsar-based X-ray navigation (XNAV) is a special case.