Desaturation manoeuvres and precise orbit determination for the BepiColombo mission

Alessi, Elisa Maria; Cicalò, Stefano; Milani, Andrea; Tommei, Giacomo

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21035.x

Cited by 25 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In this way, due to lack of knowledge in the dynamical models, the actual errors in the orbit propagation can be reduced by an over-parameterization of the initial conditions. A different choice has been made in ORBIT14, implementing the so called constrained multi-arc strategy [10,14,27]. The method is based on the idea that each observed arc belongs to the same object (the spacecraft).…”

Section: Pure and Constrained Multi-arc Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The orbits of two consecutive extended arcs should coincide at the connection time in the middle of the non-observed interval. We refer to [10,27] for a complete description of the constrained multi-arc strategy. In the constrained multi-arc approach, the parameters u can be classified, depending on the arc they refer to, as:…”

Section: Pure and Constrained Multi-arc Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the contrary, in the internally constrained multi-arc strategy, the discrepancy is constrained inside the intersection of the two ellipsoids propagated from t k 0 and t k+1 0 . All the details are extensively explained in [27]. For the results presented in this review, we will always adopt an apriori constrained multi-arc strategy.…”

Section: Pure and Constrained Multi-arc Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each maneuvre appears in the spacecraft equation of motion as an additional acceleration acting on the probe. The downgrading effect on the spacecraft orbit determination can be significant, up to tens of meters in the range observations (see, e.g., [27]). For this reason, the velocity change ∆v due to each maneuvre is added to the list of solve-for parameters, removing most of the downgrading effect from the orbit determination.…”

Section: Desaturation Maneuvresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this reason, the velocity change ∆v due to each maneuvre is added to the list of solve-for parameters, removing most of the downgrading effect from the orbit determination. The values for ∆v adopted in simulations, along with all the details on the modelization and implementation of the maneuvres scenario, are given in [27]. The presence of orbital maneuvres, which are in general much larger than the desaturation maneuvres, is not considered here.…”

Section: Desaturation Maneuvresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing General Relativity with the Radio Science Experiment of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Schettino

Tommei

2016

Universe

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Abstract:The relativity experiment is part of the Mercury Orbiter Radio science Experiment (MORE) on-board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. Thanks to very precise radio tracking from the Earth and accelerometer, it will be possible to perform an accurate test of General Relativity, by constraining a number of post-Newtonian and related parameters with an unprecedented level of accuracy. The Celestial Mechanics Group of the University of Pisa developed a new dedicated software, ORBIT14, to perform the simulations and to determine simultaneously all the parameters of interest within a global least squares fit. After highlighting some critical issues, we report on the results of a full set of simulations, carried out in the most up-to-date mission scenario. For each parameter we discuss the achievable accuracy, in terms of a formal analysis through the covariance matrix and, furthermore, by the introduction of an alternative, more representative, estimation of the errors. We show that, for example, an accuracy of some parts in 10 −6 for the Eddington parameter β and of 10 −5 for the Nordtvedt parameter η can be attained, while accuracies at the level of 5 × 10 −7 and 1 × 10 −7 can be achieved for the preferred frames parameters α 1 and α 2 , respectively.

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Section: Pure and Constrained Multi-arc Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pure and Constrained Multi-arc Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pure and Constrained Multi-arc Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Desaturation Maneuvresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Desaturation Maneuvresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing General Relativity with the Radio Science Experiment of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Schettino

Tommei

2016

Universe

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Addressing some critical aspects of the BepiColombo MORE relativity experiment

Schettino¹,

Serra²,

Tommei³

et al. 2018

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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The Mercury Orbiter radio Science Experiment (MORE) is one of the experiments on-board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, to be launched in October 2018. Thanks to full on-board and on-ground instrumentation performing very precise tracking from the Earth, MORE will have the chance to determine with very high accuracy the Mercury-centric orbit of the spacecraft and the heliocentric orbit of Mercury. This will allow to undertake an accurate test of relativistic theories of gravitation (relativity experiment), which consists in improving the knowledge of some post-Newtonian and related parameters, whose value is predicted by General Relativity. This paper focuses on two critical aspects of the BepiColombo relativity experiment. First of all, we address the delicate issue of determining the orbits of Mercury and the Earth-Moon barycenter at the level of accuracy required by the purposes of the experiment and we discuss a strategy to cure the rank deficiencies that appear in the problem. Secondly, we introduce and discuss the role of the solar Lense-Thirring effect in the Mercury orbit determination problem and in the relativistic parameters estimation.

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A multi-arc approach for chaotic orbit determination problems

Serra

Spoto

Milani

2018

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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Chaotic dynamical systems are characterized by the existence of a predictability horizon, connected to the notion of Lyapunov time, beyond which predictions of the state of the system are meaningless. In order to study the main features of orbit determination in presence of chaos, Spoto and Milani (2016) applied the classical least squares fit and differential correction algorithm to determine a chaotic orbit and a dynamical parameter of a simple discrete system-Chirikov standard map (cf. Chirikov (1979))-with observations distributed beyond the predictability horizon. They found a time limit beyond which numerical calculations are affected by numerical instability: the computability horizon. In this article we aim at pushing forward such inherent obstacle to numerical calculations in chaotic orbit determination by applying the classical and the constrained multi-arc method (cf. Alessi et al. (2012)) to the same dynamical system. These strategies entail the determination of an orbit when observations are grouped in separate observed arcs. For each arc a set of initial conditions is determined and, in the case of the constrained multi-arc method, all subsequent arcs are constrained to belong to the same trajectory. We show that the use of these techniques in place of the standard least squares method has significant advantages: not only can we perform accurate numerical calculations well beyond the computability horizon, in particular the constrained multi-arc strategy improves considerably the determination of the dynamical parameter.

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Desaturation manoeuvres and precise orbit determination for the BepiColombo mission

Cited by 25 publications

References 14 publications

Testing General Relativity with the Radio Science Experiment of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Testing General Relativity with the Radio Science Experiment of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Addressing some critical aspects of the BepiColombo MORE relativity experiment

A multi-arc approach for chaotic orbit determination problems

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