NASA working on intergalactic GPS

[rhoenix]

You're probably already used to getting great GPS coverage in many of the places you visit. Now get ready for GPS in space. NASA is working to build a navigation system that would work anywhere in our solar system and beyond, IEEE Spectrum reported.

Spacecraft now depend mostly on radio signals sent from Earth to navigate, as Spectrum explains. As craft get further away from Earth, however, that method becomes less accurate. So NASA is looking to use signals from neutron stars—super dense, super high-energy stars at the end of their lifetimes—to locate ships in deeper space.

Certain neutron stars, called pulsars, emit powerful beams of light while spinning rapidly. NASA compares pulsar light to lighthouse beams. Their movement is extremely regular, so a spacecraft detecting those beams will know exactly where each beam is expected to be in space at any given time, and thus calculate where it is in space, too. Pulsar beams are detectable in "every conceivable" point in space where people might want to fly in the future, Ken Gendreau, the lead scientist in the project, said in a statement.

Gendreau and his team plan to test the system in a machine they'll send to the International Space Station in 2017. The mission is called Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology, or NICER/SEXTANT.

Using neutron stars & pulsars as the equivalent of GPS nodes is actually really clever. We'll have to update as some pulsars fade and others appear of course, but they would be a fairly reliable source for navigation data.

[Batman]

Wouldn't exactly call it intergalactic, though. Signal strength is bound to be a little on the low side once you get to Andromeda, leave alone anything really distant.
While I don't see us needing this any time in the foreseeable future (read-the next 20,000 years or so) I agree its a pretty clever idea.