[time-nuts] Overheard from NASA

[Jim Lux]

On 5/10/11 3:43 AM, Jim Palfreyman wrote:
> Why xray pulsars?
>
> Millisecond pulsars have shown themselves to be very accurate - wouldn't an
> ensemble of those be a better choice?
>
> Jim
>

I think it's an energy/flux density thing.  you need a big antenna to 
detect the millisecond pulsars.. bigger than will fit on a spacecraft a 
few meters on a side. Cassini was huge (4+ meters in diameter, maybe 
twice that long), but a lot of spacecraft are much smaller.  The vault 
on Juno is about a 1 meter cube.