China gets closer to Jupiter mission by bringing Nasa’s StarNAV concept to life

Chinese researchers have tested a new way for spacecraft to navigate in deep space, putting a concept funded by Nasa into practice and paving the way for the country’s planned mission to Jupiter in 2030.

Known as stellar aberration navigation, the approach uses tiny shifts in the relative position of stars to work out how fast a probe is moving and in what direction, allowing autonomous real-time navigation without constantly relying on tracking and commands from Earth.