TY - JOUR
T1 - Mothership-Cubesat Radioscience for Phobos Geodesy and Autonomous Navigation
AU - Chen, Hongru
AU - Rambaux, Nicolas
AU - Lainey, Valéry
AU - Hestroffer, Daniel
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments: The authors appreciate Sebastien Le Maistre (Royal Observatory of Belgium) for allowing the usage of his distribution map in Figure 13. This work benefits from the computer clusters tycho and cerfeuil, financed and managed by Observatoire de Paris and IMCCE. The first author appreciates the constant support from the informatics department of IMCCE delivered by Stephane Vaillant and Mickaël Gastineau, and also wants to thank Zhuoxi Huo (QXSLab) for an invited visit, Jinsong Ping (NAOC/CAS) for his advice on the Doppler error analysis, and Long Long (CAST) for making the 3D model of the CubeSat.
Funding Information:
Data Availability Statement: The orbit selection in Section 2 and the true data listed in Table 5 benefit from the results and provided information of the research (e.g., Refs. [33,34,36]) supported by the CNES Research Action (Reference No.: R-S18/BS-0005-039), which are subject to the copyright of CNES.
Funding Information:
g: The present work was initially sponsored by the PSL ESEP Labex for the BIRDY project and is currently sponsored by the Casio Science Promotion Foundation (No. 39-27) and the Education and Research Center for Mathematical and Data Science, Kyushu University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/4/1
Y1 - 2022/4/1
N2 - The knowledge of the interior structure (e.g., homogeneous, porous, or fractured) of Martian moons will lead to a better understanding of their formation as well as the early solar system. One approach to inferring the interior structure is via geodetic characteristics, such as gravity field and libration. Geodetic parameters can be derived from radiometric tracking measurements. A feasible mothership-CubeSat mission is proposed in this study with following purposes, (1) performing inter-sat Doppler measurements, (2) improving the understanding of Phobos as well as the dynamic model, (3) securing the mothership as well as the primary mission, and (4) supporting autonomous navigation, given the long distance between the Earth and Mars. This study analyzes budgets of volume, mass, power, deployment ∆v, and link, and the Doppler measurement noise of the system, and gives a feasible design for the CubeSat. The accuracy of orbit determination and geodesy is revealed via the Monte-Carlo simulation of estimation considering all uncertainties. Under an ephemeris error of the Mars-Phobos system ranging from 0 to 2 km, the autonomous orbit determination delivers an accuracy ranging from 0.2 m to 21 m and 0.05 mm/s to 0.4 cm/s. The geodesy can return 2nd-degree gravity coefficients at an accuracy of 1‰, even in the presence of an ephemeris error of 2 km. The achieved covariance of gravity coefficients and libration amplitude indicates an excellent possibility to distinguish families of interior structures.
AB - The knowledge of the interior structure (e.g., homogeneous, porous, or fractured) of Martian moons will lead to a better understanding of their formation as well as the early solar system. One approach to inferring the interior structure is via geodetic characteristics, such as gravity field and libration. Geodetic parameters can be derived from radiometric tracking measurements. A feasible mothership-CubeSat mission is proposed in this study with following purposes, (1) performing inter-sat Doppler measurements, (2) improving the understanding of Phobos as well as the dynamic model, (3) securing the mothership as well as the primary mission, and (4) supporting autonomous navigation, given the long distance between the Earth and Mars. This study analyzes budgets of volume, mass, power, deployment ∆v, and link, and the Doppler measurement noise of the system, and gives a feasible design for the CubeSat. The accuracy of orbit determination and geodesy is revealed via the Monte-Carlo simulation of estimation considering all uncertainties. Under an ephemeris error of the Mars-Phobos system ranging from 0 to 2 km, the autonomous orbit determination delivers an accuracy ranging from 0.2 m to 21 m and 0.05 mm/s to 0.4 cm/s. The geodesy can return 2nd-degree gravity coefficients at an accuracy of 1‰, even in the presence of an ephemeris error of 2 km. The achieved covariance of gravity coefficients and libration amplitude indicates an excellent possibility to distinguish families of interior structures.
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U2 - 10.3390/rs14071619
DO - 10.3390/rs14071619
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85127898630
VL - 14
JO - Remote Sensing
JF - Remote Sensing
SN - 2072-4292
IS - 7
M1 - 1619
ER -