NASA's Got a Plan For a 'Galactic Positioning System' To Save Astronauts Lost in Space (space.com) 102
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.
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We have probes at the farthest edges of the solar system.
We have needed this longer than I have been alive.
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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 tec
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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?
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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.
Getting Lost is Hard with Current Tech (Score:2)
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 i
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You don't understand how triangulation works, do you? One point of reference doesn't tell you where you are. At best, it tells you how far away you are from that point of reference.
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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.
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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.
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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.
pulsars for positioning is idea with old roots (Score:5, Informative)
the plaques on the Pioneer spacecraft launched in 1972 and 1973 showed the Earth's position from 14 pulsars
I have Often Wondered... (Score:2)
... 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.
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It's replicated on Voyager too. Unfortunately the accompanying audio can be read as 'no intelligent life.'
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Hey, that's no way to talk about Janeway.
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I dunno, they might ask us to send more Chuck Barry.
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the plaques on the Pioneer spacecraft launched in 1972 and 1973 showed the Earth's position from 14 pulsars
Just because it was an old idea, doesn't mean it was a good idea...
Unfortunately, these vintage pulsar map would be nearly impossible to use [forbes.com] for its intended purpose of allowing someone in the far distant future to locate us...
However, for a short term galactic map usable on human time scales, pulsars might prove much more useful.
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article is incorrect, assumes times and distances which don't apply to probes as they will go near many star systems in less than 2 million years. So the nearby pulsars if any aliens find them in tens of thousands to couple million years will be the same and they won't change much.
article is just a meme
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Sorry but author was ignorant. The problems pointed out are for over many millions of years and immense distances. But the probes will go by other stars in a much shorter timescale, near first one in less than 100,000 years. The plaques would be useful for stars near earth and in tmespans of couple million of years.
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Darn, I was hoping the alien invasion force would have a problem with scale and be swallowed by a small dog.
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the odds are nothing will ever find it anyway, ever
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Curious how this is really different (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Curious how this is really different (Score:5, Funny)
No, wrong. Kinda. Hexagon is the right idea, but pulsars, pft.
They found the seventh chevron.
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But why was it built with 9?
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GPS works by triangulating between 4-6 satellites that are all spread out. A 3d hexagon with a person in the middle somewhere.
Since with GPS all the satellites need to be above the horizon, so they are all located on one side of you and are moving fast (so fast they need to use relativistic corrections).
Also, GPS is actually based on trilateration [wikipedia.org] (knowing the time and location of the satellites), not triangulation, but nice try...
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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.
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Good luck not getting shot down coming in from orbit without a radio and without being expected.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, ca
Better to have and not need... (Score:1)
Warning, warning, warning Will Robinson. (Score:2)
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Crewed missions? (Score:1)
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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....
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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.
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Trident SLBM s use star maps to improve their accuracy
since they could be launched from anywhere
Precision (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
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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...
What, a 708m [youtube.com] diameter too large for you?
Pulsar "quakes" (Score:2)
See Neutron pulse rate [scientificamerican.com]
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Ha! There was just a story a few days about about the discovery of a pulsar "hiccup".
Now there is a story claiming their reliability, classic Slashdot move, classic move.
Awesome! (Score:2)
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Re: Awesome! (Score:2, Interesting)
What about all those particles produced at cern. Are they not man made objects?
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Assuming that Special Relativity holds, FTL travel is equivalent to time travel. If you have one, you have the other.
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But a bit more on point, 120 years ago traveling through the air on a heavier than air vehicle wasn't even remotely possible.... so there is that time thing to consider.
GPS (Score:2)
NTP Stratum (Score:2)
Great! Atomic Clocks are already Stratum 0 in NTP. Does this make these new things Stratum -1?
Impossible (Score:2)
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.
Help! (Score:3)
The GPS said this wormhole was a shortcut!
Already done? (Score:2)
Um, delta-vee? (Score:2)
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 tr
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Don't be too hard on him - he's paid to post anti-US stuff.
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Intra-sub-system orbit != space
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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.