TY - JOUR
T1 - Survey of Capabilities and Applications of Accurate Clocks
T2 - Directions for Planetary Science
AU - Dehant, Véronique
AU - Park, Ryan
AU - Dirkx, Dominic
AU - Iess, Luciano
AU - Neumann, Gregory
AU - Turyshev, Slava
AU - Van Hoolst, Tim
PY - 2017/11/1
Y1 - 2017/11/1
N2 - For planetary science, accurate clocks are mainly used as part of an onboard radioscience transponder. In the case of two-way radio data, the dominating data type for planetary radioscience, an accurate spacecraft clock is not necessary since the measurements can be calibrated using high-precision clocks on Earth. In the case of one-way radio data, however, an accurate clock can make the precision of one-way radio data be comparable to the two-way data, and possibly better since only one leg of radio path would be affected by the media. This article addresses several ways to improve observations for planetary science, either by improving the onboard clock or by using further variants of the classical radioscience methods, e.g., Same Beam Interferometry (SBI). For a clock to be useful for planetary science, we conclude that it must have at least a short-time stability (<1,000s) better than 10 − 13 and its size be substantially miniaturized. A special case of using laser ranging to the Moon and the implication of having an accurate clock is shown as an example.
AB - For planetary science, accurate clocks are mainly used as part of an onboard radioscience transponder. In the case of two-way radio data, the dominating data type for planetary radioscience, an accurate spacecraft clock is not necessary since the measurements can be calibrated using high-precision clocks on Earth. In the case of one-way radio data, however, an accurate clock can make the precision of one-way radio data be comparable to the two-way data, and possibly better since only one leg of radio path would be affected by the media. This article addresses several ways to improve observations for planetary science, either by improving the onboard clock or by using further variants of the classical radioscience methods, e.g., Same Beam Interferometry (SBI). For a clock to be useful for planetary science, we conclude that it must have at least a short-time stability (<1,000s) better than 10 − 13 and its size be substantially miniaturized. A special case of using laser ranging to the Moon and the implication of having an accurate clock is shown as an example.
KW - Atomic clock
KW - Positioning
KW - Radioscience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85031896870&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11214-017-0424-y
DO - 10.1007/s11214-017-0424-y
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85031896870
SN - 0038-6308
VL - 212
SP - 1433
EP - 1451
JO - Space Science Reviews
JF - Space Science Reviews
IS - 3-4
ER -