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A Rebel astrogation officer
Astrogation, also known as astronavigation, was the science of navigating spacecraft through realspace and hyperspace.
Two tasks defined astrogation: determining present location, and planning a safe and reliable means of reaching a destination. The former was performed by those skilled in astrocartography, familiar with star patterns or automata. Astronav charts mapped areas of space and could be used to plot courses through hyperspace. The plotting of a course was generally handled exclusively by astromech droids or navigation computers.
The knowledge of one's whereabouts in space and other celestial objects was vital to navigating hyperspace, as incorrectly calculated jumps meant a ship could collide with a planet, star, or other body.
Description[]
Astrogation was the process of plotting a course for a starship between two star systems. The time it took to calculate a route using a navigation computer varied depending on several factors. It could take as little as a minute if the vessel's position was known, and the course was along a commonly traveled hyperlane to a previously charted destination. Travelling from a known position to one that had not previously been travelled to could take a few hours for the navigation computer to calculate the coordinates. In situations where the vessel's position was unknown, it could take around a day for the navigation computer to plot the starship's position and then calculate hyperspace coordinates.[1]
Behind the scenes[]
Astrogation is an original sci-fi word which means "star navigation." Since etymologically and historically the part "navi-" refers to terrestrial ships, it has been replaced by the prefix "astro-."
