Enhanced X-ray pulsar navigation based on ranging information of a satellite
Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
ISSN: 0002-2667
Article publication date: 31 May 2022
Issue publication date: 5 December 2022
Abstract
Purpose
X-ray pulsar navigation (XPNAV) is an autonomous celestial navigation technology for deep space missions. The error in the pulse time of arrival used in pulsar navigation is large for various practical reasons and thus greatly reduces the navigation accuracy of spacecraft near the Earth and in deep space. This paper aims to propose a novel method based on ranging information that improves the performance of XPNAV.
Design/methodology/approach
This method replaces one pulsar observation with a satellite observation. The ranging information is the difference between the absolute distance of the satellite relative to the spacecraft and the estimated distance of the satellite relative to the spacecraft. The proposed method improves the accuracy of XPNAV by combining the ranging information with the observation data of two pulsars.
Findings
The simulation results show that the proposed method greatly improves the XPNAV accuracy by 70% compared with the conventional navigation method that combines the observations of three pulsars. This research also shows that a larger angle between the orbital plane of the satellite and that of the spacecraft provides higher navigation accuracy. In addition, a greater orbital altitude difference implies higher navigation accuracy. The position error and ranging error of the satellite have approximately linear relationships with the navigation accuracy.
Originality/value
The novelty of this study is that the satellite ranging information is integrated into the pulsar navigation by using mathematical geometry.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Foundation of the Joint Research Center for Near Space Vehicle Tracking, Telemetry and Command (TT & C) and Special Measurement Technology.
Funding: Support for this work was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62103313).
Citation
Zhang, L., Fang, H., Bao, W., Sun, H., Shen, L., Su, J. and Zhao, L. (2022), "Enhanced X-ray pulsar navigation based on ranging information of a satellite", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 94 No. 10, pp. 1872-1882. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEAT-05-2021-0155
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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