The Phoenix mission is designed to study the arctic region of Mars. To achieve this goal, the spacecraft must be delivered to a narrow corridor at the top of the Martian atmosphere, which is approximately 20 km wide. This paper will discuss the details of the Phoenix orbit determination process and the effort to reduce errors below the level necessary to achieve successful atmospheric entry at Mars. Emphasis will be placed on properly modeling forces that perturb the spacecraft trajectory and the errors and uncertainties associated with those forces. Orbit determination covariance analysis strongly influenced mission operations scenarios, which were chosen to minimize errors and associated uncertainties.
Orbit Determination for the 2007 Mars Phoenix Lander
2008 AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Specialists Conference ; 2008 ; Honolulu, HI, United States
2008-08-18
Conference paper
No indication
English
Orbit Determination for the 2007 Mars Phoenix Lander
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2008
|Orbit Determination for the 2007 Mars Phoenix Lander
AIAA | 2008
|SPECIAL SECTION: MARS PHOENIX LANDER
Online Contents | 2011