Autonomous navigation using x-ray pulsars and multirate processing

In this paper, autonomous pulsar-based spacecraft navigation problem is formulated in terms of a nonlinear filtering problem. The spacecraft dynamics, pulsar-timing model, and clock deviation model are combined to form the navigation system. An extended Kalman filter that uses epoch folding and leverages the timescale of the system is developed to more efficiently estimate the spacecraft states from four simultaneous X-ray pulsar measurements. Simulation results of an orbiter mission and a deep space mission are presented to show the accuracy of pulsar-based navigation in space.

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