2013/07/20 by X. P. Deng, G. Hobbs, X. P. You +15 · 58 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Geology #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Inertial Sensor and Navigation #Interplanetary spaceflight #Magnetic field #Mars Exploration Program #Millisecond pulsar #Physics #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio telescope #Remote sensing #Solar System #Solar wind #Spacecraft #Telescope #X-ray pulsar #astro-ph.IM #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.asr.2013.07.025
published in Advances in Space Research 52(9), 1602-1621 (Elsevier BV) · accepted by Advances in Space Research
arxiv created 2013/07/20 · openalex publication_date 2013/07/24 · arxiv updated 2015/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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.