It’s called Sextant Navigation for Exploration Missions, which is a quintessentially NASA technical name for an experiment to test whether a centuries-old navigational tool works in deep space.

Photograph by Martin Timmermann What it is: Horizon Ultra Sextant by Cassens & Plath What it's used for: Navigating the high seas after all the other equipment breaks Claiming to have the world's ...

The “eye” of the radio sextant, according to Radio-Astronomer Fred Haddock of NRL, is a dish-shaped antenna only three feet in diameter. When the receiver is switched on, ...