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One of the hardest things for many people to conceptualize when talking about how fast something is going is that they must ask, \u201cCompared to what?\u201d All motion only makes sense from a frame of reference, and many spacecraft traveling in the depths of the void lack any regular reference from which to understand how fast they\u2019re going. There have been several different techniques to try to solve this problem, but one of the ones that have been in development the longest is StarNAV \u2013 a way to navigate in space using only the stars.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Several projects named \u201cStarNAV\u201d seem to be ongoing at various stages of development, including a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant for some researchers on the East Coast of the US and a small start-up company based on technology out of UC Irvine. In this case, we\u2019ll look at the work done by the researchers, particularly a paper they released last year detailing some progress toward a prototype.<\/p>\n The technology developed by Paul McKee of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Hoang Nguyen and Michael Kudenov of North Carolina State, and John Christian of Georgia Tech is based on a specific feature of stars known as stellar aberration. As defined in the Special Theory of Relativity, stellar aberration occurs when the velocity of an observer changes the apparent distance between it and a star.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n