Kalman Filter Analysis for Orbit Estimation using Pulsars for Interplanetary Missions

Autonomous Navigation in Interplanetary Missions is the main challenge due to lack of dense ground tracking network measurements. This paper presents a novel technique for determining spacecraft position and velocity using celestial X-ray sources, such as pulsars. It portrays the formulation of the pulsar measurements and describes the development of a noise model for X-ray Navigation and brings out the cumulative efforts in this developing field. In addition to that, it also covers the blending of the pulsar-derived measurements with a Kalman filter for continuous determination of position and velocity of an Earth orbiting spacecraft. Several sampling analysis are presented to establish the expected performance using measurements obtained from models of pulsed X-ray signals. This is the first step and future efforts shall make the orbit estimation more sophisticated.