Space Navigation with Optical Pulsars

Deep-space navigation, thus far, has strongly relied on ground segments. Nevertheless, the positioning accuracy of ground-based navigation systems decreases with the distance from the Earth, significantly increasing the positioning uncertainty for interplanetary missions. Furthermore, ground-based navigation systems require extensive ground operations, and their limited bandwidth could lead to a point of full utilization in the future. The aim of this Thesis is to introduce - for the first time ever - the concept of Space Navigation by Optical Pulsars, a novel technology which aims at overcoming the limits of ground-based navigation systems and those of the already proposed X-ray pulsar-based NAVigation and timing systems. This Thesis presents, first, an introduction to autonomous satellite navigation, highlighting the benefits pulsars could bring. Then, the physical and timing properties of optical pulsars are presented, investigating on the timing techniques allowing to reconstruct, process and make use of a pulsar signal, leading to a position (and velocity) estimation. Finally, the Thesis reports the design for the proposed optical payload and the orbit determination performance of the system, investigating also an on-board optical pulsar-based time synchronization.