Technical Implementation of X-ray Pulsar Navigation Observation and Project Management Experience Exploration

X-ray pulsar navigation (XPNAV), as a new autonomous navigation method, has been widely used in deep space exploration. XPNAV requires a certain filtering time, and the length of filtering time will affect the final navigation accuracy. At the same time, orbital altitude and pulsar selection are also important factors affecting navigation accuracy. Based on the XPNAV theory and the traditional three-pulsar navigation method, this paper uses UKF algorithm and STK software to analyze the influence of different pulsar combinations, orbit heights and observation steps on navigation accuracy for nonlinear systems, and gives the optimal observation time and navigation accuracy under different conditions. The simulation results show that with the increase of orbit altitude, the observation step size increases, and the navigation accuracy increases gradually. In this paper, when the pulsar combination is B0531 + 21, B1821–24 and B1937 + 21, achieves the highest navigation accuracy on the high orbit, where the position error is 739 m and the velocity error is 0.1906m/s. The simulation results provide a theoretical basis for determining navigation accuracy, orbit selection and observation time parameters in the application of Earth-orbiting pulsar navigation.