autonomous spacecraft navigation ppnf
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Current autonomous spacecraft navigation is computationally bottlenecked by two requirements: N-body gravitational integration scaling as O(N2) per timestep, and post-Newtonian (1PN) corrections requiring evaluation of 10-component metric tensors with ~50 coupled quantities per body pair. On radiation-hardened flight processors delivering ~200 MIPS, these requirements force post-Newtonian corrections to be computed on the ground and uploaded — precluding true onboard autonomy for GR-class precision navigation. This brief presents an alternative computational architecture derived from the PP–NF (Pressure Potential – Nodal Field) substrate framework, which replaces the full tensor apparatus with a single scalar coherence differential field and a directional windward–leeward (WL) correction vector. The resulting dimensionality reduction — from ~50 coupled quantities to 3 per body pair — enables real-time, onboard, GR-equivalent trajectory computation on existing flight hardware. Five new navigation capabilities are identified: precomputed coherence map navigation, WL real-time trajectory correction, structure-dependent gravitational modeling for rubble-pile proximity operations, simplified multi-body encounter planning, and catalog-scale planetary defense screening. Each capability is quantified against current operational baselines.
Source: Figshare
Author: Chrisman, Mark
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7155647335