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Astra: Interdisciplinary study on enhancement of the end-to-end accuracy for spacecraft tracking techniques
Iess, Luciano; Tortora, Paolo; Di Benedetto, Mauro +3 more
Navigation of deep-space probes is accomplished through a variety of different radio observables, namely Doppler, ranging and Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging (Delta-DOR). The particular mix of observations used for navigation mainly depends on the available on-board radio system, the mission phase and orbit determination requirements. The accur…
Landing on small bodies: From the Rosetta Lander to MASCOT and beyond
Ulamec, Stephan; Biele, Jens; Geurts, Koen +9 more
Recent planning for science and exploration missions has emphasized the high interest in the close investigation of small bodies in the Solar System. In particular in-situ observations of asteroids and comets play an important role in this field and will contribute substantially to our understanding of the formation and history of the Solar System…
Stability of spinning satellite under axial thrust and internal mass motion
Janssens, Frank L.; van der Ha, Jozef C.
This paper considers a spinning rigid body and a particle with internal motion under axial thrust. This model is helpful for gaining insights into the nutation anomalies that occurred near the end of orbit injections performed by STAR-48 rocket motors. The stability of this system is investigated by means of linearized equations about a uniform sp…