Giotto spacecraft dynamics during the encounter with comet Halley.
Abstract
The Giotto spacecraft's dramatic encounter with comet Halley on 14 March 1986 was also "traumatic" in view of the extensive inferred damage to the experiments and spacecraft subsystems from impinging cometary dust. The available data indicate that one particularly severe impact (min. mass: 100 mg) about 8 s before closest approach to the comet precipitated a large-amplitude spacecraft nutation of slightly more than 1°. Among the preliminary conclusions is that the largest single particle to strike the spacecraft probably had a mass between 100 and 200 mg. Using a value for the post-encounter nutation angle of 1.04° observed by the Giotto Sun sensor, numerical downlink signal level simulations yield best agreement with observations for a wobble angle of 0.4°, and a High Gain Antenna (HGA) depointing error of approximately 1.0°.
- Publication:
-
ESA Journal
- Pub Date:
- 1988
- Bibcode:
- 1988ESAJ...12..149B
- Keywords:
-
- Astrodynamics:Space Probes;
- Space Probes:Astrodynamics