http://arxiv.org/abs/1712.03832
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.
K. Wood and P. Ray
Tue, 12 Dec 17
21/78
Comments: 30 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the 593. WE-Heraeus Seminar on Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation, ed. W. Becker