Results of the VEGA Pathfinder concept which was used to successfully target the European Space Agnecy's Giotto spacecraft to a 600 km encounter with the comet Halley are presented. Pathfinder was an international cooperative navigation activity involving USSR, European and U.S. space agencies. The final Giotto targeting maneuver was based on a comet location determined from optical data acquired by the earlier arriving Soviet VEGA spacecraft. Inertial pointing angles extracted from optical images of the comet nucleus were combined with a precise estimate of the VEGA encounter orbits determined using VLBI data acquired by NASA's Deep Space Network to predict the location of Halley at Giotto encounter. This article describes the VLBI techniques used to determine the VEGA orbits and shows that the insensitivity of the VLBI data strategy to unmodeled dynamic error sources resulted in estimates of the VEGA orbits with an accuracy of 50 km.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    VEGA Pathfinder navigation for Giotto Halley encounter


    Contributors:
    Ellis, J. (author) / Mcelrath, T. P. (author)


    Publication date :

    1986-11-15


    Type of media :

    Miscellaneous


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Vega Pathfinder Navigation for Giotto Halley Encounter

    J. Ellis / T. P. Mcelrath | NTIS | 1986



    Interplanetary Magnetic Field During the Giotto Encounter and the Induced Magnetosphere of Comet Halley

    Israelevich, P. L. / Neubauer, F. M. / Ershkovich, A. I. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995



    GIOTTO : the second encounter

    European Space Agency | SLUB | 1992