HomeSpace & AstronomyCelestial Triangulation: Deep-Space Optical Navigation

🛰️ Celestial Triangulation: Deep-Space Optical Navigation

A star tracker photographs known planets against the star background and measures the angular separation between them — the probe triangulates its own 3D position purely from those angles and known body ephemerides, with no radio signal at all. Drag the probe's true position and watch the fix re-solve live, or run a multi-day cruise comparing unbounded dead-reckoning drift against a repeatedly re-triangulated celestial fix.

Space & Astronomy3DAdvanced60 FPS
celestial-triangulation-deep-space-optical-navigation ↗ Open standalone
⚙ Under the hood

A star tracker photographs known planets against the star background and measures the angular separation between them — the probe triangulates its own 3D position purely from those angles and known body ephemerides, with no radio signal at all. Drag the probe's true position and watch the fix re-solve live, or run a multi-day cruise comparing unbounded dead-reckoning drift against a repeatedly re-triangulated celestial fix.

Three.jsoptical navigationstar trackerangles-only triangulationGauss-Newtondeep space navigationdead reckoning

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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