A Novel Autonomous Celestial Integrated Navigation for Deep Space Exploration Based on Angle and Stellar Spectra Shift Velocity Measurement

Abstract

Traditional autonomous celestial navigation usually uses astronomical angle as measurement, which is a function of spacecraft’s position and can’t resolve the spacecraft’s velocity directly. To solve this problem, velocity measurement by stellar spectra shift is proposed in this paper. The autonomous celestial integrated navigation method is derived by combining velocity measurement with angle measurement, which can ensure the long-term high accuracy, real-time and continuous navigation performance for deep space exploration (DSE) missions. The observability of the integrated navigation system is analyzed. Moreover, the design of doppler navigator and hardware in-the-loop simulation system are described. Finally, a simulation example is employed to demonstration the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed navigation algorithm.

StarNAV: Autonomous Optical Navigation of a Spacecraft by the Relativistic Perturbation of Starlight

“…Although the Doppler shift of starlight (or sunlight) may seem to be the most obvious means of autonomous velocity estimation, it is shown here to be a poor approach for many navigation applications within the Solar System. This finding is important to record in detail despite the negative result, as using the Doppler effect for stellar (or solar) or autonomous navigation has been repeatedly suggested over the last sixty years [4,5,60,61,62,63]. With the exception of [8,62], few authors seem to fully appreciate the practical difficulties associated with this approach.…”

“…Although the concept of using the observed shift of certain spectral lines or of the entire spectrum for navigation is not new—having been considered for navigation within our Solar System [4,5] and beyond [6,7]—many prior studies neglect the essential challenges to such a framework arising from stellar oscillations, granules, and other forms of stellar surface activity (despite many of these challenges being known since nearly the beginning [8]). Indeed, this work demonstrates that autonomous navigation using StarNAV-DE measurements is likely to be ineffective for near-term applications due to instability in the spectral signature of most stars and challenges with instrument calibration.…”

“…While the possibility of spacecraft navigation by the Doppler shift of spectra was recognized by at least the early 1960s [4], the practical difficulties in such an approach were quickly realized [8]. Despite these challenges, numerous studies were subsequently performed on the efficacy of navigation using Doppler shift from the Sun [60,61,62] and from stars [5,63]—with some authors (e.g, [62]) ultimately abandoning the approach for reasons similar to [8]. Of note is that many of these complications may be avoided within the context of relative navigation by comparing the spectra observed at more than one location, thus, allowing one to estimate the relative velocity between the two observers.…”

Mars's Moons-Induced Time Dispersion Analysis for Solar TDOA Navigation

“…Because they are not limited by ground stations, the celestial autonomous navigation methods are particularly important in the approach phase of deep space exploration (Yan et al, 2016). Traditional celestial autonomous navigation methods include angle measurement (Konopliv et al, 2011;Yu et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2017), speed measurement (Long et al, 2000;Chen et al, 2019;Christian, 2019), and distance measurement (Sheikh et al, 2006;Liu et al, 2015a;Sun et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2019). But these methods fail to provide the radial navigation information (such as distance and velocity) between the spacecraft and the target celestial body in the approach phase of deep space exploration.…”

Modelling and analysis of celestial Doppler difference velocimetry navigation considering solar characteristics

“…The velocity information of spacecraft is related to the spectral frequency shifts. The accuracy of autonomous navigation for deep space exploration can be further improved if the velocity information can be directly obtained from the spectrum [9, 10]. In 1960, Franklin RG has proposed the idea of determining the velocity of the spacecraft by measuring the Doppler shift of the celestial spectrum [11].…”