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Navigation and Orbit Estimation for New Horizons' Arrokoth Flyby: Overview, Results and Lessons Learned

Weaver, Harold A.; Kavelaars, J. J.; Gwyn, Stephen D. J. +18 more

The New Horizons mission performed a successful flyby of Arrokoth, a distant Kuiper-Belt Object, on January 1, 2019, representing the farthest planetary encounter to date. The navigation strategy and performance required to deliver the spacecraft to the desired flyby target were driven by a number of challenges including those related to Arrokoth'…