The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars on March 10, 2006 and performed a Mars orbit insertion maneuver of 1 km/s to enter into a large elliptical orbit. Three weeks later, aerobraking operations began and lasted about five months. Aerobraking utilized the atmospheric drag to reduce the large elliptical orbit into a smaller, near circular orbit. At the time of MRO aerobraking, there were three other operational spacecraft orbiting Mars and the navigation team had to minimize the possibility of a collision. This paper describes the daily operations of the MRO navigation team during this time as well as the collision avoidance strategy development and implementation.


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    Title :

    Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Aerobraking Daily Operations and Collision Avoidance




    Publication date :

    2007-09-24


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English