Navigation Challenges During Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter Aerobraking Campaign
NON-PEER REVIEW Please select category below: Normal Paper Student Paper Young Engineer Paper Navigation Challenges during ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter Aerobraking Campaign Gabriele Bellei 1, Francesco Castellini 2, Frank Budnik 3 and Robert Guilanyà Jané 4 1 DEIMOS Space located at ESA/ESOC, Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, Darmstadt, 64293, Germany 2 Telespazio VEGA located at ESA/ESOC, Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, Darmstadt, 64293, Germany 3 ESA/ESOC, Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, Darmstadt, 64293, Germany 4 GMV INSYEN located at ESA/ESOC, Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, Darmstadt, 64293, Germany Abstract The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter satellite spent one year in aerobraking operations at Mars, lowering its orbit period from one sol to about two hours. This delicate phase challenged the operations team and in particular the navigation system due to the highly unpredictable Mars atmosphere, which imposed almost continuous monitoring, navigation and re-planning activities. An aerobraking navigation concept was, for the first time at ESA, designed, implemented and validated on-ground and in-flight, based on radiometric tracking data and complemented by information extracted from spacecraft telemetry. The aerobraking operations were successfully completed, on time and without major difficulties, thanks to the simplicity and robustness of the selected approach. This paper describes the navigation concept, presents a recollection of the main in-flight results and gives a retrospective of the main lessons learnt during this activity. Keywords: ExoMars, Trace Gas Orbiter, aerobraking, navigation, orbit determination, Mars atmosphere, accelerometer Introduction The ExoMars program is a cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos for the robotic exploration of the red planet.
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