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Using Pulsars As GPS For Starships

Posted by timothy on from the go-into-the-light-turn-left dept.

cold fjord writes with an excerpt from Science Codex: "CSIRO scientists have written software that could guide spacecraft to Alpha Centauri ... Dr George Hobbs (CSIRO) and his colleagues study 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 behaviour of a pulsar itself ... 'But we can also work backwards,' said Dr Hobbs. '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. ... A paper (paywalled) describing in detail how the system would work has been accepted for publication by the journal Advances in Space Research." (Here is a related story from the same source.)

18 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Paywalled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My taxes paid for it!

    1. Re:Paywalled? by bartron · · Score: 4, Informative

      Only partially. CSIRO gets some funding from the government but the rest it needs to make up from revenue by selling stuff (IP or services), setting up research partnerships etc.

    2. Re:Paywalled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I demand partial access to the papers!

  2. Unpaywalled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The paper is available free from the arXiv (http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5375)

  3. The past called.. by sjwt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is so 1970's...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

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    1. Re:The past called.. by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It should not come as a surprise to anyone. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be here, only that the summary sucks. It should have something new and interesting in it.

      It should be obvious to anyone who is familiar with both GPS and DtoA. Which should be all of you by now, goddamn it.

      --
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    2. Re:The past called.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The abstract of the paper (unpaywalled version) has a better summary.

      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 ~20 km and velocity measurements with a precision of ~0.1 m/s.

      In other words, they're not just saying that it's a theoretical possibility. They're saying "this is the type of telescope you need", "this is how you have to process the data", and "this is how precisely you can measure your position". Next step, I guess, is building the hardware.

  4. Good work Dr Hobbs! by monzie · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'd like to congratulate Dr Hobbs and his team for inventing a navigation system for Starships. Now, I look forward to Zefram Cochrane's work on the Warp Drive getting completed!

    1. Re:Good work Dr Hobbs! by GNious · · Score: 3, Funny

      When you've located a person with that name, here is a link to Warp Field Mechanics 101, by NASA:
      http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf

  5. ridiculous by DragonTHC · · Score: 2

    This is like Karl Benz figuring out road signs.

    If we currently do not have a way to travel to the stars, then what does it matter how we find our way among them?

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  6. Second star to the right... by phobos512 · · Score: 2

    ...and straight on 'till morning.

  7. Re:Too complicated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stars move. You'd be adding hundreds of years to your travel time by taking a curved path. Better to go in a straight line to where the star will be in 10,000 years, for which purpose you'd need... navigation.

  8. Re:Too complicated by gatkinso · · Score: 2

    Yeah, aim for where Alpha Centauri was FOUR YEARS AGO... eventually you will be chasing the star and there is a good possibility it will be moving faster than you are so you will simply watch it recede from you as you slowly starve/suffocate.

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  9. Visibility by IPFreely · · Score: 2

    Are the pulses from pulsars visible from all directions, or just from the plane of rotation? If you move far enough, will some disappear and others appear?

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    1. Re:Visibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Are the pulses from pulsars visible from all directions, or just from the plane of rotation?

      Not from all directions, but not always from the plane of rotation either. The pulse sweeps around at a fixed angle from the plane of rotation, which may not be 90 degrees.

      But you're right: if we went far enough, we'd stop seeing some pulsars, and start seeing some new ones. So if we start travelling more than a thousand light years or so, we'll need another means of navigation.

      The original paper only talks about using it as a means of navigation within the solar system, though, for which it's perfectly fine, and much more precise than existing methods.

  10. Re:Global? by edxwelch · · Score: 2

    Apple maps will still screw it up and show Alpha Centari in the Andromeda galaxy

  11. Re:Really? by donscarletti · · Score: 2

    Yeah, it's totally boring that these guys are now able to calculate the observer's position anywhere in the galaxy to within several metres and velocity to within less than a meter per second, something previously only imagined in the realm of sci-fi. Next thing you know they'll be building a working warp drive, holodeck, transporter or something else equally trite and unoriginal.

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  12. Re:Talk about putting the cart before the horse! by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

    Developing a system of coordinates before you can actually travel - putting Descartes before the horse.

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