In-orbit demonstration of X-ray pulsar navigation with the Insight-HXMT satellite

Abstract

In this work, we report the in-orbit demonstration of X-ray pulsar navigation with Insight-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT), which was launched on Jun. 15th, 2017. The new pulsar navigation method 'Significance Enhancement of Pulse-profile with Orbit-dynamics' (SEPO) is adopted to determine the orbit with observations of only one pulsar. In this test, the Crab pulsar is chosen and observed by Insight-HXMT from Aug. 31th to Sept. 5th in 2017. Using the 5-day-long observation data, the orbit of Insight-HXMT is determined successfully with the three telescopes onboard - High Energy X-ray Telescope (HE), Medium Energy X-ray Telescope (ME) and Low Energy X-ray Telescope (LE) - respectively. Combining all the data, the position and velocity of the Insight-HXMT are pinpointed to within 10 km (3 sigma) and 10 m/s (3 sigma), respectively.

arXiv commentAccepted by the Astrophysical Journal Supplement

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Review of X-ray pulsar spacecraft autonomous navigation
• Fast On-orbit Pulse Phase Estimation of X-ray Crab Pulsar for XNAV Flight Experiments
• In-orbit timing calibration of the Insight-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope
• Pulsar and Magnetar Navigation with Fermi/GBM and GECAM
• Prospects for Time-Domain and Multi-Messenger Science with eXTP
• The Timing Residual Patterns Due to Pulsar Acceleration