This paper illustrates the potential of X-ray pulsar and inter-satellite links applied on the distributed navigation for multi-spacecraft missions. Corresponding autonomous navigation schemes are designed and generally verified for formation flying and constellation missions respectively. Firstly, X-ray pulsar time of arrival measurement model is established for the absolute navigation of formation flying spacecrafts. By transferring and integrating simultaneous X-ray photon observations taken by spacecrafts at different locations, observations operation is conducted with higher efficiency. Secondly, a navigation scheme using X-ray pulsars time difference of arrival observation and inter-satellite pseudo-range measurement is designed for multiple-spacecraft constellation missions. Measurement models are established, and the Cramer-Rao lower bound values are calculated for navigation performance evaluation under different inter-satellite link availability conditions. Simulations are undertaken with example missions including a Sun-Earth L2 point vicinity formation flying and a lunar frozen orbit constellation. The simulating results validate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.
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