What is NASA FALCON Optical Navigation (GPS-Free Orbit Determination)?

Spacecraft must know where they are in orbit, a task called orbit determination. Satellites usually navigate with GPS signals, but those can be unreliable or unavailable around the Moon or in deep space. FALCON is a navigation technique that uses a spacecraft's own cameras to spot other satellites and orbital debris, matches them to a catalog of known space objects, and uses them as reference points to work out its own orbit. It was tested on NASA's Starling mission, a four-spacecraft demonstration swarm, as a joint experiment with EraDrive, a startup spun out of Stanford University. In a three-day test it also improved the known orbits of more than 200 objects without help from ground operators.

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