Get Navigation Overview - Nasa - Nasa

Using the Deep Space Network antennas, mission controllers can determine the position and speed of a spacecraft with great precision. If the spacecraft needs to adjust its course, they can send commands to the spacecraft through radio waves to change its trajectory.

Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the practice of position fixing using stars and other celestial bodies that enables a navigator to accurately determine their actual current physical position in space or on the surface of the Earth without relying solely on estimated positional calculations, ...

Navigating a spacecraft to distant locations in the solar system requires a team of scientists and engineers using sophisticated radios, large antennas, computers, and precise timing equipment.

Instead of a compass, spacecraft sensors use the sun and stars to determine the craft's orientation relative to the coordinate frame. Desired directions can be specified in several ways with respect to the defined frame, but two angular measurements are commonly used.

Navigating a spacecraft to distant locations in the solar system requires a team of scientists and engineers using sophisticated radios, large antennas, computers, and precise timing equipment.

We launch satellites and spacecraft into space by putting them on rockets carrying tons of propellants. The propellants give the rocket enough energy to boost away from Earth's surface. Because of the pull of Earth's gravity, largest, heaviest spacecraft need the biggest rockets and the most propellent.

Currently, NASA relies primarily on radio waves for communications, but the agency is developing ways to communicate with infrared lasers. This type of transmission — dubbed optical communications — will offer missions higher data rates than ever before.

NASA users in orbit can determine their position and time using communications channel tracking via the Deep Space Network (DSN), Near Space Network (NSN), or by on-board means of processing one-way radio-navigation signals from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the US Global Positioning System (GPS).