Research/ ORBITAL ROBOTICS
Mars Sample Return orbital rendezvous detection methods
Eric D. Gustafson, Robert J. Haw
Preprint 2019//NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Technique
Rendezvous, Proximity Ops & Dockingtext match
Missions
Mars Sample Returnnamed in title
Indexed as
No official subject categories from arXiv, OpenAlex or NTRS for this paper.
Navigation trades while in pursuit of a rendezvous with a sample capsule in orbit around Mars are described. The rendezvous operation is described in terms of far-field and near-field detection. Passive optical detection is compared with active capsule detection using a radio beacon. Passive methods are, to first order, unconstrained by time while a radio beacon link is time-limited. A possible activity to make use of orbiter plume interactions is explored.