[Interview] How to Find Your Way Home in Space

If you were dropped in a random place in space, how would you find your way home? New Horizons tackled this problem with a first interstellar navigation demonstration. Using parallax in real time to determine its position in space. How did they pull it off and what other interesting things can spacecraft do? Finding out in this interview.

😍 [Interview+] Bonus Part. No YT ads.

https://www.patreon.com/universetoday

🟣 Guest: Dr Tod Lauer

https://staff.noirlab.edu/tod.lauer/

📜 A Demonstration of Interstellar Navigation Using New Horizons

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.21666

00:00 Intro

01:48 Finding your way home from a random place in the galaxy

05:58 Test with New Horizons

19:19 Science with New Horizons after its main mission

26:02 The era of JWST

34:49 The Question to ask

37:58 Current obsessions

43:07 Final thoughts

📺 VIDEO VERSION

https://youtu.be/YcHchdHwBpw

📰 GUIDE TO SPACE Newsletter

No ads. Subscribe for FREE: https://universetoday.com/newsletter

🎧 PODCASTS

Universe Today: https://universetoday.fireside.fm/

Astronomy Cast: http://www.astronomycast.com/

📩 CONTACT FRASER

[email protected]

⚖️ LICENSE

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Support Universe Today Podcast