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NASA Team First to Demonstrate X-ray Navigation in Space
In a technology first, a team of NASA engineers has demonstrated fully autonomous X-ray navigation in space — a capability that could revolutionize NASA's ability in the future to pilot robotic spacecraft to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond.
The demonstration, which the team carried out with an experiment called Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology, or SEXTANT, showed that millisecond pulsars could be used to accurately determine the location of an object moving at thousands of miles per hour in space — similar to how the Global Positioning System, widely known as GPS, provides positioning, navigation, and timing services to users on Earth with its constellation of 24 operating satellites.
[...] The SEXTANT technology demonstration, which NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate had funded under its Game Changing Program, took advantage of the 52 X-ray telescopes and silicon-drift detectors that make up NASA's Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER. Since its successful deployment as an external attached payload on the International Space Station in June, it has trained its optics on some of the most unusual objects in the universe.
"We're doing very cool science and using the space station as a platform to execute that science, which in turn enables X-ray navigation," said Goddard's Keith Gendreau, the principal investigator for NICER, who presented the findings Thursday, Jan. 11, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington. "The technology will help humanity navigate and explore the galaxy."
Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer
Previously: NASA to Study Neutron Stars; Sends New Instrument to ISS; SpaceX Launch Sat @ 2107 UTC (1707 EDT)
Related: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' Of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 15 2018, @10:41AM (5 children)
Related: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' Of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong [soylentnews.org]
In essence - the pulsars (fast rotating neuron start) emit into a narrow cone - what we see as pulses are in fact the brief moments in which this code points towards Earth.
Give it enough of a distance and you're not going to see that radiation cone ever. Or you are going to see it more frequent. Or with a different "duty cycle" (length of pulse over pulse period). Or. anywhere in between.
On long enough time scale, you may even see changes of frequency - we didn't observe pulsars long enough to know if they are predictable enough long term - there are indications they are not [arxiv.org].
Writing alone will not help you in knowing your position for long, you need active observations. In a "generation ship", you'll need astronomers to keep the data accurate for hundred of generations. It takes a single "glitch" to be lost forever.
Seeing how (part of the) Earth population, for example, forgets what fascism is and trying to revive it violently, I don't give too many chances to a generation ship.
And today I don't see any existent technology able to give an alternative (to generation ships) answer to intragalactic travel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 15 2018, @03:24PM (3 children)
With today's technology, I don't think we're too far from frozen embryo thawing and robotic raising / education of the children. If we were really into it, we could start today with the first generation prototypes and start working out the kinks.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:43AM (2 children)
With the technology today, it's shooting (seeds - grin if you know what I mean) in the dark - you'll never know if you succeeded or not.
Since you can't verify, you can't even call it "an experiment".
Besides, what do you think those robots will teach, scrambled human eggs? While embryo thawing is within reach of the present technology, artificial wombs are not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:04AM (1 child)
Little kinks... nobody really needs artificial wombs here.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:56AM
Like in... you really got me [youtube.com]?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday January 15 2018, @06:07PM
The thing about a generation ship is by the time they get to their destination, they won't be interested in it. They'll have adapted, in some way, to living in space. What they'll probably want to do is build another few copies of the ship and set off for elsewhere various elsewheres, because that's what their culture will be adapted for. This needs to be planned for ahead of time, and not considered anything bad. To them "lost" will mean passing through an area that someone else has already mined out of resources. But though the resources en-route are sparse, there *are* mobile, so a region doesn't *stay* mined out.
The problem is, if they lose their technology, they're dead. And they can't go too fast, or they can't mine as they travel. They need to travel just a bit faster than the local drift. But that's OK. Speed kills. Plowing into a 4 Kg asteroid at a relative 0.0001C is the last thing you'd ever do.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.