The TOA Equation for the Autonomous Navigation of the Spacecraft Based on the Binary Pulsar System

The binary pulsar rotates very quickly and steadily, which is one of the best resources for spacecraft navigation. This paper simply introduced the basic characters of the binary pulsar, such as the magnitudes and distributions and so on. Furthermore, the advantages and problems of binary pulsar used in the autonomous navigation were discussed. The TOA equation of the binary pulsar was derived using the methods of Newtonian mechanics, and the Timing errors caused by the variation of orbital elements were analyzed. The post-Newtonian corrections of the Keplerian orbital elements for binary system were derived, and magnitudes of the post-Newtonian corrections were presented.