NAVIGATION AND MISSION DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES FOR FUTURE PLANETARY SCIENCE MISSIONS

Future planetary explorations envisioned by the National Research Council's Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022 seek to reach targets of broad scientific interest across the solar system. Advancements in guidance, navigation, and control and mission design ranging from software and algorithm development to new sensors will be necessary to enable these future missions. This paper describes the general categories of mission design capabilities that need further development in support of future planetary science missions: multiple-encounter tour design, close-proximity trajectory design for small-body missions, low-energy trajectory design and optimization, multiple-spacecraft trajectory optimization, and low-thrust trajectory design and optimization. The paper also describes a number of ways in which deep space navigation may be enhanced in the future, including precise one-way radio metric tracking, based on use of the proposed Deep Space Atomic Clock; autonomous navigation (in particular, its application to autonomous aerobraking, outer planet tours, and primitive body/lunar proximity operations and pinpoint landing); evolutionary improvements in Deep Space Network radio metric data accuracy; and derivation of metric tracking data from optical communication links.