Highlights Are osynchronous and low Mars orbit satellites evaluated on their EOL opportunities. Transferring them to graveyard orbits is the only realistic end-of-life measure. Graveyard orbits prevent interactions with original orbits for at least 200 years. Derelict spacecraft in areosynchronous orbits must be lowered in altitude by 400 km. Graveyard orbits for low Mars orbit satellites are 100 km below the original orbits. For graveyard orbit objects, free tumbling and uncertainties in state are assessed. Graveyard orbit behaviour depends ongeometry characteristics of spacecraft-Mars-Sun.

    Abstract Mars is expected to become a focal point of exploration (human and robotic) in the coming century, with a very likely need for a robust space infrastructure. Be it communication and navigation satellite constellations or scientific missions in low Mars orbits (LMO) and Areosynchronous orbits (ASO), every individual satellite will have a definitive period of operation after which it becomes derelict. At the end-of-life (EOL) the satellite shall be proactively dealt with in a sustainable manner to protect our access to the space environment of Mars and opportunities to use this. Clearly, impacting Mars or escaping Mars’ gravity are no viable options. This paper aims at identifying graveyard orbit solutions in circummartian space for future Mars space debris. Orbital stability for a period of 200 years is studied for Martian orbits using the symplectic integration technique. Extensive validations are performed and propagation and integration settings are tuned to suit a variety of configurations. A plethora of candidate graveyard orbit solutions are found and presented for orbits in the ASO and LMO regimes. For example, it is found that transferring an ASO satellite to 400 km below the nominal orbit altitude would ensure a stability margin of ± 25 km for at least 200 years. Multiple orbital geometry characteristics (combinations of semi-major axis, inclination, right ascension of ascending node), satellite geometries (various values of area-to-mass ratio) and uncertainties are studied to produce a comprehensive analysis of long-term stability of potential graveyard orbits around Mars, making them attractive for such purposes. The protected zones are found to be safe from debris even for an uncertainty in initial eccentricity of 0.01 and variations in cross-sectional area due to uncontrolled tumbling. The overall objective of this paper is to make designers of future missions to Mars aware of the EOL aspects and include this in their mission design proposals at an early stage already.


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    Titel :

    Graveyard orbits for future Mars missions


    Beteiligte:
    Aggarwal, Kapish (Autor:in) / Noomen, Ron (Autor:in)

    Erschienen in:

    Advances in Space Research ; 72 , 7 ; 2901-2916


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2022-07-10


    Format / Umfang :

    16 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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