I Will There Be a Solar System Navigation System for Space Travel?

[happyhacker]

Earth has GPS, GNSS and more I guess. Will there (eventually) be a Navigation system for our Solar system so that autonomous (and manned) flights can move around like we do in our vehicles with an onscreen map. Not trying to be fanciful here just wondered if there are discussions or papers. I assume any trip to Mars say would have a system onboard in case of emergencies like lost Earth contact. And not trying to get to the Stars but I guess that is a different e.g. pulsar method when having left the Solar system behind but only mentioned it as any Solar Positioning System (SPS) might signal for that purpose as the 'Home' coordinate. Also wondered if existing Spacecraft orbiting planetary bodies by default act as reference points. Did iSearch but not anything really obvious there. Thanks.

 

[trurle]

Currently deep-space navigation utilize precision DSN ranging as equivalent to GPS.
Work is ongoing on optical navigation
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/session_3_-4_ spacecraft _navigation_using_optical_astrometry_ranging_tomas_martin-mur_0.pdf

to reduce DSN loads.

Also, some talks do exist to deploy Moon GPS, but currently seems simply not enough demand to consider it seriously.

 

[happyhacker]

Thanks. The ref you gave (below) it seems they've pulled it. Never mind. I wonder if when the number of rovers on site say Mars gets significant then a GPS system (or equivalent In the orbiting control MRO?) would help ground vehicles collaborate (in an AI context). And of course anything orbiting could be part of a wider Nav system. Complex stuff I guess and futuristic.

404 The cosmic object you are looking for has disappeared beyond the event horizon.

 

[berkeman]

The ref you gave (below) it seems they've pulled it.

Looks like a small typo in the original link. (I searched on the PDF name, and this new link was the first hit on the Google list):

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/...cal_astrometry_ranging_tomas_martin-mur_0.pdf

 

[happyhacker]

You are kind. Why didn't I think of that!