Nanoradian ground-based astrometry, optical navigation, and artificial reference stars

Chengxing Zhai; Michael Shao; Abhijit Biswas; Todd Ely; Christopher Jacobs; Joseph Lazio; Tomas Martin-Mur; William Owen Jr.; Mike Rud; Navtej Saini; Jagmit Sandhu; Slava Turyshev; Thomas Werne

doi:10.1117/12.2233689

9 August 2016 Nanoradian ground-based astrometry, optical navigation, and artificial reference stars

Chengxing Zhai, Michael Shao, Abhijit Biswas, Todd Ely, Christopher Jacobs, Joseph Lazio, Tomas Martin-Mur, William Owen Jr., Mike Rud, Navtej Saini, Jagmit Sandhu, Slava Turyshev, Thomas Werne

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9908, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VI; 99085B (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2233689
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

Spacecraft carrying optical communication lasers can be treated as artificial stars, whose relative astrometry to Gaia reference stars provides spacecraft positions in the plane-of-sky for optical navigation. To be comparable to current Deep Space Network delta-Differential One-way Ranging measurements, thus sufficient for navigation, nanoradian optical astrometry is required. Here we describe our error budget, techniques for achieving nanoradian level ground-base astrometry, and preliminary results from a 1 m telescope. We discuss also how these spacecraft may serve as artificial reference stars for adaptive optics, high precision astrometry to detect exoplanets, and tying reference frames defined by radio and optical measurements.

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Chengxing Zhai, Michael Shao, Abhijit Biswas, Todd Ely, Christopher Jacobs, Joseph Lazio, Tomas Martin-Mur, William Owen Jr., Mike Rud, Navtej Saini, Jagmit Sandhu, Slava Turyshev, and Thomas Werne "Nanoradian ground-based astrometry, optical navigation, and artificial reference stars", Proc. SPIE 9908, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VI, 99085B (9 August 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2233689

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