Spacecraft Can Now Use Pulsars To Navigate Their Way To Alpha Centauri

Scientists have devised a way for spacecraft to navigate themselves by using the small stars called pulsars.

Asian Scientist (Aug. 20, 2013) – Scientists have written software that could guide spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, show that the planet Nibiru doesn’t exist … and prove that the Earth goes around the Sun.

The team, led by astronomers in China and Australia, achieved this by studying pulsars — small spinning stars that deliver regular ‘blips’ or ‘pulses’ of radio waves and, sometimes, X-rays.

Usually the astronomers are interested in measuring, very precisely, when the pulsar pulses arrive in the solar system. Slight deviations from the expected arrival times can give clues about the behavior of a pulsar itself, or whether it is orbiting another star, for instance.

“But we can also work backwards,” said Dr George Hobbs, the leader of the research team.

“We can use information from pulsars to very precisely determine the position of our telescopes.”

“If the telescopes were on board a spacecraft, then we could get the position of the spacecraft.”

Observations of at least four pulsars, every seven days, would be required.

“Each pulsar would have to be observed for about an hour,” Dr Hobbs said.

“Whether you can do them all at the same time or have to do them one after the other depends on where they are and exactly what kind of detector you use.”

A paper describing in detail how the system would work has been accepted for publication by Advances in Space Research.

Spacecraft within the solar system are usually tracked and guided from the ground. But the further out the craft go, the less accurately we can measure their locations.

For voyages beyond the solar system, spacecraft would need an on-board (‘autonomous’) system for navigation. Gyroscopes and accelerometers are useful tools, but the position information they give becomes less accurate over time.

“Navigating with pulsars avoids these problems,” said Xinping Deng, lead author of the paper.

“This is the best accuracy anyone has ever been able to demonstrate”

The new version of the software also lets the astronomers rule out unseen masses, including any supposedly undiscovered planets, such as the notorious Nibiru.

“Even if a planet is hard to see, there’s no way to disguise its gravitational pull,” said Dr Hobbs.

“If we don’t detect the gravitational pull, then there’s no planet there. Full stop.”

And what about showing that the Earth goes around the Sun? Yes, they can do that too.

“This was nailed a couple of hundred years ago,” said Dr Hobbs.

“But if you still need proof, we’ve got it.”

The article can be found at: Deng et al. (2013) Interplanetary Spacecraft Navigation Using Pulsars.

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Source: CSIRO; Image: European Southern Observatory/Flickr/CC.
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