Launched on a Delta IV-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral on August 12, 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) will travel closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft. PSP is designed to complete 24 solar encounters over its seven-year mission. During the 24 orbits, PSP gradually shrinks its orbit around the Sun, coming as close as 3.83 million miles using a series of seven Venus flybys. The spacecraft will explore the inner region of the heliosphere and perform in-situ and remote sensing observations of the magnetic field, plasma, and accelerated particles. The spacecraft was designed and built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, where mission operations are currently conducted. This paper describes the development and execution of the mission operations “Orbit-in-the-Life” and early operations mission simulations performed using the spacecraft during thermal vacuum testing. The author will first discuss selection and organization of activities and events to be tested and effects of the spacecraft engineering team’s desire to use mission operations tests to also perform spacecraft performance requirement testing. Next, the author will discuss selecting the orbit to be performed during the “Orbit-in-the-Life” test and the challenges for condensing a one-hundred-and-twenty-day orbit into a ten-day test. Then, preparing for the test, including executing an accelerated version of the orbit planning process with the four instrument teams and pre-testing the tests using the hardware-in-the-loop simulator will be described. Last, executing the test will be discussed including dealing with anomalies and lessons learned.


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    Title :

    Parker Solar Probe Pre-launch Mission Operations Orbit-In-The-Life Mission Simulation


    Additional title:

    Springer Aerospace Techn.


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Space Operations ; Chapter : 3 ; 57-87


    Publication date :

    2022-03-16


    Size :

    31 pages





    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English





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