X射线脉冲星导航技术研究进展

X射线脉冲星能够为近地轨道、深空和星际空间飞行航天器提供位置、速度、时间和姿态等丰富的导航信息,实现航天器高精度自主导航和运行管理,有着巨大的发展潜力．本文论述了X射线脉冲星导航技术研究历程;重点研究了X射线脉冲星导航的基本原理、信息处理流程和自主导航算法,进而提出了脉冲星导航的关键技术;分析了国内脉冲星观测研究的基础条件,以及开展X射线脉冲星导航技术研究的必要性和可行性．

Advance in X-Ray Pulsar Navigation Technology

The pulsars are the result of a massive star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel and undergone a core-collapse resulting in a supernova explosion. Its radius is roughly 10 km and mass near 1.4 solar. There are the very strong gravitational, electronic and magnetic fields for the pulsar. The pulsar might emit in the radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma-ray of the spectrum. Meanwhile, the navigation parameters for the spacecraft on the low earth orbit, deep space and interplanetary flight can, including the position, velocity, attitude and time, be determined highly-accurately by detecting the X-ray radiation of pulsars. And then the spacecrafts are able to flight and operate autonomously. Therefore, the potential of using the X-ray Pulsar Navigation (XPNAV) is very high. Firstly, the history of XPNAV is described briefly in this paper. Secondly, the basic principles, information flow charts and autonomous navigation algorithms are studied in detail as an main part. Moreover the key techniques of XPNAV, including the all-sky surveying and data processing for the X-ray pulsars, pulse-arrival-time measuring and error correcting, X-ray detector and weak signal processing, establishment and maintenance of the space-time reference, and robust filtering of the autonomous information processing, are also presented. Finally, the essentiality and feasibility to study XPNAV are also shown in some detail.