On the Doppler navigation of a small body orbiter: Rosetta

Abstract

In 2014 the ESA probe Rosetta is to rendezvous with short-period comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will be inserted into a stable bound orbit. Partly by measuring the Doppler displacements of the probe's radio carrier waves, the gravity field of the comet's nucleus will be found. In this work, navigation strategies are developed, and important error sources for and feasibility of the comet nucleus mass determination are presented.