Interplanetary Spacecraft Navigation and Guidance: Mechanics of Probe Entry and Ballistic Transfers to Sun-Earth Lagrange L1 Halo Orbits

Interplanetary Spacecraft Navigation and Guidance examines a vast field that was developed to enable the exploration of the Moon and planets in the solar system by increasingly sophisticated spacecraft, flying-by, landing, or orbiting the inner and outer planets and releasing probes to enter their atmosphere. The book starts with the theoretical analysis of the information content of radiometric and optical data during planetary encounters. Then, in Chapter 2, an orbit determination accuracy assessment for an asteroid flyby is carried out to show how the dominant error in the determination of the spacecraft orbit relative to the asteroid due to the latter's a priori ephemeris uncertainty is dramatically reduced by the contribution of the spacecraft-based optical data, allowing for accurate targeting and instrument pointing requirements. Chapter 3 derives analytic expressions for the sensitivity of the hyperbolic planetary flyby and probe entry parameters, such as the longitude of the entry as well as the inertial entry angle, the rotation of the line of apsides, and the time of the entry, to errors in the incoming velocity and B-plane aim vector. In Chapter 4, the mathematical description of two key computer programs used in conjunction with the JPL Orbit Determination Program (ODP) to carry out probe delivery error analyses based on simulated data schedule is exposed in great detail. The Galileo probe trajectory reconstruction accuracy analysis is shown in Chapter 5, with an extensive analysis of the sensitivity of the probe entry angle to various error sources, as well as to different combinations of radiometric data types and data coverage strategies. The second part of this book is devoted to the generation of Lagrange point L1 halo orbits, and transfers from Earth orbit to the halo orbits. Chapter 6 shows the mechanics of the three-body problem, as well as Richardson's third-order approximate analytic solution for periodic halo orbits around the Sun-Earth L1 point within the context of the circular restricted three-body problem, which is used to generate the initial guess for the initial conditions that are iterated on in an exact sense to arrive at a desired bounded periodic halo orbit. Chapter 7 shows how to compute ballistic transfer trajectories from Low Earth Orbits (LEO) to the L1 halo orbits generated in the previous chapter. Chapter 8 discusses transfer trajectories from Low Earth Orbit to a Large L1 -centered class I halo orbit in the Sun-Earth circular problem using a constrained insertion mode. In Chapter 9, the local regularization technique is applied to the more accurate restricted elliptic three-body problem in rotating coordinates, resulting in a system of ten first-order differential equations in terms of the Levi-Civita-Kustaanheimo-Stiefel regularized u-variables. The last chapter consists of an application of the regularized system of differential equations to the case in which picosatellites are released at regular intervals of time from halo and also from distant retrograde orbits to ensure that a solar surveillance zone centered on the Sun-Earth axis is always populated by these satellites for solar weather forecasting from impending solar storms.

Jean Albert Kéchichian is a retired engineering specialist at The Aerospace Corporation. He has made lasting contributions in astronautical guidance and astrodynamics over the past 25 years. His extensive involvement in NASA's interplanetary and planetary missions include the design of the orbit sustenance maneuvering strategies of the TOPEX spacecraft, the design of the turn and orbit change maneuvers of the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) , direct support of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter mission operations, and the Galileo Probe trajectory reconstruction accuracy analysis. His software has been used by The Aerospace Corporation to fly actual spacecraft to the GEO orbit using optimal low-thrust transfer trajectories. He is also the recipient of a NASA/JPL invention citation mentioned in the NASA Tech Brief Vol. 11, No. 3, Item 66, March 1987, for providing the solution of fuel-optimal east-west station-keeping of geostationary spacecraft subject to daily momentum wheel dumps. Dr. Kéchichian received his Engineer's degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Universite de Liege in Wallonie, Belgium in 1971, and his MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976. In 1977, he received his PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. From 1979 to 1987, Dr. Kéchichian was a Maneuver and Orbit Determination Analyst at JPL. From 1987 to 1989 he worked as a Senior Engineering Specialist at Ford Aerospace. Dr. Kéchichian then worked as an Engineering Specialist at The Aerospace Corporation from 1989 until his retirement. He is also the author of Applied Nonsingular Astrodynamics, Cambridge University Press (2018), Orbital Relative Motion and Terminal Rendezvous, Springer (2021), and Analytic Methods of Orbit Prediction and Control: Low-Thrust and Impulsive Propulsion Applications, AIAA (2023).