UHF RELAY PERFORMANCE DURING THE ENTRY DESCENT AND LANDING OF THE MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY

This paper discusses the MSL telecommunications configuration for UHF relay data during EDL, as well as the configuration of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey. Actual link performance will be compared to a priori predictions including signal strength, Doppler shift, UHF plasma blackout, and the range and angles between MSL and UHF relay assets. Predictions were generated using telecom link budgets and models developed at JPL. These data were also integrated into MSL's primary end-to-end EDL performance simulation, NASA Langley's Program to Optimize Simulated Trajectories II (POST2), which enabled telecom predictions based on Monte Carlo results of EDL simulations.