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NASA's Got a Plan For a 'Galactic Positioning System' To Save Astronauts Lost in Space (space.com)
From a report: Outer space glows with a bright fog of X-ray light, coming from everywhere at once. But peer carefully into that fog, and faint, regular blips become visible. These are millisecond pulsars, city-sized neutron stars rotating incredibly quickly, and firing X-rays into the universe with more regularity than even the most precise atomic clocks. And NASA wants to use them to navigate probes and crewed ships through deep space. A telescope mounted on the International Space Station (ISS), the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), has been used to develop a brand new technology with near-term, practical applications: a galactic positioning system, NASA scientist Zaven Arzoumanian told physicists Sunday (April 15) at the April meeting of the American Physical Society.
With this technology, "You could thread a needle to get into orbit around the moon of a disant planet instead of doing a flyby," Arzoumian told Live Science. A galactic positioning system could also provide "a fallback, so that if a crewed mission loses contact with the Earth, they'd still have navigation systems on board that are autonomous." Right now, the kind of maneuvers that navigators would need to put a probe in orbit around distant moons are borderline impossible.
With this technology, "You could thread a needle to get into orbit around the moon of a disant planet instead of doing a flyby," Arzoumian told Live Science. A galactic positioning system could also provide "a fallback, so that if a crewed mission loses contact with the Earth, they'd still have navigation systems on board that are autonomous." Right now, the kind of maneuvers that navigators would need to put a probe in orbit around distant moons are borderline impossible.
Talk about ignoring the last half century of history.
We have probes at the farthest edges of the solar system.
We have needed this longer than I have been alive.
the plaques on the Pioneer spacecraft launched in 1972 and 1973 showed the Earth's position from 14 pulsars
GPS works by triangulating between 4-6 satellites that are all spread out. A 3d hexagon with a person in the middle somewhere.
With extra-terrestrial navigation, the person is very far outside of that hexagon. It's really hard to find an exact position when you have multiple sources that - for all intents and purposes - are co-located. Get far enough from Earth and all GPS satellites are one dot in the distance. Looks like they've found a way to use various stars as the points of that hexagon. Cool.
...than to get off at the wrong exit of Intergalactic Highway 39.
Sorry, couldn't resist and get off my lawn.
Don't be too hard on him - he's paid to post anti-US stuff.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
More like something happens to your radio or antenna, but your systems are still otherwise OK. So you can get back to earth from some point in space, but mission control can't make course corrections and such. Fortunately, you have this space GPS doobly-doo that can let your computer guide itself.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm so sorry your investment in Buggy Whip futures has turned you sour on the future.
I think what the GP means is that no _astronaut_ has been so far from earth as to need this tech. It may well save a probe, but it won't save an astronaut... because if they're far enough away to need this, then knowing where you are isn't much help.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
There is nobody that is even alive today, nor probably for the next several centuries, that is going to need something like this.
And George Boole was just a madman.
... when watching Star Trek, if currently NASA had in a mind a method that could be used much like a GPS.
This could very well be useful in our lifetimes if they were to build a ship powered by Ion, plasma, etc. drives that could point and go instead of relying on being thrown across space like a rock.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
GPS has what, ~3/4 meters precision? That's on Earth.
This would eventually have 1 km precision in _all_ of space. Ya that's a big circle on my futuristic, hologram smartphone Goopple Maps (c), but in _all_ of space?! Damn...
I don't disagree, but they should really be focused on recycling technologies. We still have to send water up to crack into oxygen while throwing the shit overboard and continuously taking in new resources. We need mechanisms to recycle (not filter) things like Ammonia and shit for space habitation a Hell of a lot more than we need a tech to navigate which would be dependent upon a tech for propulsion we aren't anywhere near having yet (that's not to say this isn't useful research, but they should really be focused on advanced propulsion development and waste reclamation - the former just to be able to get anywhere [dread reckoning with an engine is better than GPS without so much as having legs] and the latter to be able to actually survive without constant resupply from Earth and the associated logistic chain.)
See Neutron pulse rate
So after our own solar system is utterly destroyed, the few survivors will still have some idea where they are! Unfortunately, faster than light travel still isn't even a remote possibility.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I disagree, George Boole was false.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Actually, I suspect we do, right now. We would just have to skip some testing and take chances.
'safely put people in space' is a better goal.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
We have probes at the farthest edges of the solar system.
Indeed we do but crucially those probes do not contain astronauts nor can they do much more than float through the void so even if they got lost there is nothing they can do about it. With our current technology manned spacecraft have large teams of people on Earth monitoring them and very limited propulsion so getting lost is extremely hard and, if it happens, there is probably nothing to be done anyway. Indeed, given that the furthest anyone has ever gone so far is the moon you can find out where Earth is by just using your eyes.
> No, you have dreamed about sci-fi that will never happen. Get a real goal.
We use the stars to navigate the land, the seas, and the sky.
We built a constellation of artificial stars that speak our gadgets use to locate themselves.
And now we're talking about using natural (as far as we know) pulsing stars as a constellation of stars that speaks to our gadgets, using them to locate themselves.
What I'm talking about is in no way science fiction. It's the plainly visible, natural advancement of technology.
Like the part where we don't even have the Concorde anymore, no one's been to the Moon in almost as long, and all we do is send trained monkeys into Low Earth Orbit?
Or maybe like the part where NASA has the launch of a Mars probe scheduled for about 3 weeks from now on May 5th?
Oh, wait, that really fucks up your argument, doesn't it?
I'm curious. What part of basic physics says that a spacecraft cannot be built which can travel for a couple-three years?
Note that in terms of travel time, Mars is closer to Cape Canaveral than China was to Spain when Chris set out in the Santa Maria....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
So... they made a different version of GPS and named it... GPS? Global... Galactic... they might want a name that starts with a different letter.
The Apollo missions included a periscope and modified sextant to allow the astronauts to navigate based on sightings from various stars. It was critically important to ensure the craft was where they thought it was.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Great! Atomic Clocks are already Stratum 0 in NTP. Does this make these new things Stratum -1?
Right now, the kind of maneuvers that navigators would need to put a probe in orbit around distant moons are borderline impossible.
Human space history is full of deemed impossible things that were accomplished.
The real challenge nowadays is to accomplish anything within modern space industry Quality Assurance standards.
The GPS said this wormhole was a shortcut!
Trident SLBM s use star maps to improve their accuracy
since they could be launched from anywhere
Didn't the Ancients already figure this out using a set of six astrological symbols representing any point in space, with the seventh symbol representing the point of origin? Plus, Captain Samantha Carter figured out how to account for stellar drift.
And I think we still don't have it.
Unless you land a probe *on* the distant moon first, that starts broadcasting the moon's position relative to the rest of the galaxy, a galactic positioning system still is not going to help the hypothetical probe find its way into orbit.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Intra-sub-system orbit != space
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Good luck not getting shot down coming in from orbit without a radio and without being expected.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'd point out that Chris Columbus miscalculated the size of the ocean *by half*, and nearly lost his ship to mutiny inspired by starvation, before sighting land.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What? Who would shoot down a spacecraft? Especially one that they'd see coming for months or even years? It's not like people would forget that they launched and then lost contact with it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That would depend on if the controlling agency and government was even still in existence. And the paranoia of what replaced it. ICBMs are also returning spacecraft with no identifying radio.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If a probe is heading for a distant planet, it's moving pretty fast, because we don't want to wait several lifetimes to get the information back. If it's moving pretty fast, its nowhere near orbital speed for a moon (Triton?), and its trajectory is going to be limited so it won't be able to play fancy games with gravity slingshots. That's the big problem with getting into orbit. Not precision of trajectory.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I think you are on a whole different level than I am... I'm talking about mitigating an antenna or equipment failure, and you are talking about the end of life as we know it. You are correct, knowing your location in space will not save us from nuclear war.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And worse yet, knowing your location in space will not save you from some idiot on the ground thinking your returning spacecraft is nuclear war.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
That is just not a problem. First of all, they would know that they lost a spacecraft and would be looking for it. A spacecraft with a last known position and trajectory would be very easy to find, with its fuel supply defining any possible deviations. Second of all, nuclear war doesn't begin with a single re-entry - it begins with hundreds of launches. Stuff hits the Earth all the time from space without triggering nuclear war or attempts at a shootdown. Just a few years ago a huge meteor nailed Russia, causing millions in damage. No war, no attempts to shoot it down. Spacecraft-sized objects seem to hit earth every few years, and so far no nuclear crises.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.