Investigation of NANOGrav 15-Year Pulsar Dataset as Natural Oscillators for Space Missions

NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) and ESA’s European Space Tracking (ESTRACK) systems are essential to monitor ongoing space missions, providing precise radial position data. However, they suffer from significant errors in the perpendicular direction, are resource-intensive, and rely heavily on manual efforts. To address these challenges, autonomous onboard determination of position and velocity is emerging as a more efficient alternative. Pulsars, highly magnetized spinning neutron stars emitting periodic pulses, have been proposed as natural beacons for navigation since their discovery in 1967. This study investigates the use of pulsar radio signals for space-timekeeping and navigation, leveraging 15 years of data from NANOGrav. We focus on three core objectives: (1) analyzing the long-term stability of pulsars, (2) estimating spacecraft’s position accuracy based on pulsar stability, and (3) constructing a pulsar ensemble to evaluate improvements in timing and positioning accuracies. Our findings reveal several pulsars exhibiting stability below 1 × 10?14 over integration times ranging from one to more than 15 years. Furthermore, by forming an ensemble of pulsars, we achieve stability levels of 10?16 and position accuracies better than 50 meters over extended time periods. These results underscore the potential of pulsar-based navigation and timekeeping for precise, autonomous space exploration, reducing reliance on Earth-based systems.