The Cassini spacecraft is in its final years. On September 15, 2017, Cassini will plunge deep into Saturn's atmosphere never to reemerge; thus concluding its second extended mission and 13 years in orbit around the ringed planet. As of October 2014, the spacecraft is four years in to its seven-year, second extended mission, the Cassini Solstice Mission (CSM). With three years left and only 2.5% of its loaded bipropellant and 37% of its loaded monopropellant remaining, the Cassini project actively manages the predicted end-of-mission propellant margins to maintain a high confidence in the spacecraft's ability to complete the CSM as designed. Accurate spacecraft navigation, rigorous remaining-propellant estimation, and frequent future propellant consumption prediction have resulted in efficient propellant use and a probability of sufficient propellant margin greater than 99%.


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    Title :

    Ensuring Cassini's end-of-mission propellant margins


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2015-03-01


    Size :

    1629979 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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