Pulsar/Star Tracker/INS Integrated Navigation Method Based on Asynchronous Observation Model

AbstractX-ray pulsar navigation has been considered a great potential navigation method for high-attitude missions and deep-space explorations. One of the main problems of X-ray pulsar navigation is that its accuracy is low. In this paper, a pulsar/star tracker/inertial navigation system (INS)–integrated navigation method was studied. Unlike the traditional pulsar-based integrated navigation method, the novel system was decomposed into two parts according to the speed of the filtering rate, the attitude filter and the velocity and position filter, which could improve the navigation efficiency and reduce the amount of calculation. The simulation results showed that the accuracy of the proposed integrated navigation method was improved by more than 50% compared to pulsar navigation, proving the effectiveness of the integrated navigation scheme proposed in this paper in improving navigation accuracy.