Navigate your Spaceship using Dead Stars

Currently navigation of spacecrafts is done by radio waves sent out into space from a network of ground stations located on Earth. As the spacecraft has to wait for instructions from Earth it makes navigation in space a lengthy and time consuming process. Now the European Space Agency is looking at a new navigation technique for spaceships.

They are hoping to use x-rays from dead stars to help the space ships navigate autonomously in space.  Researchers at the National Physics Laboratory have already been working on the navigation system in the solar system and hope to extend its capacity beyond into outer space.

Pulsars are the x-rays from dead stars which will be used to help the navigation of a large number of space crafts. The traditional navigation system can support only a limited number of spacecrafts. The news system will be a major improvement and will allow more than one space mission to be undertaken autonomously.

Researchers at the University of Leicester hope that using pulsars with regular frequency of emission will allow the news system to work as a new space GPS system. This will revolutionize the way space ship navigation occurs. It is still some ways from becoming a reliable navigation system but the ongoing science project is one which will have a major impact.