The Mars Atmospheric and Gravity Experiment (MAGE) with ESA's ExoMars2016 Spacecraft.
Abstract
Although radio-science experiment has not been foreseen in the payload of the ExoMars2016 (TGO) spacecraft, its radio-navigation tracking data offers the opportunity to perform such experiment. The main interest of the TGO orbit is its non-polar orbit (inclination of 74 degrees) unlike most of others Martian spacecraft orbits. Such an inclination indeed offers for the first time the opportunity to solve for the the fine seasonal variations of the even harmonics of the gravity field, which are poorly resolved by tracking data of Martian spacecraft so far. The method which will be used is the Precise Orbit Determination, which consist of precisely reconstruct the spacecraft orbital motion from which is extracted the gravity field solution.
Here, we will show preliminary results about the orbit accuracy that can be reached with radio-tracking data of TGO and the expected precision on the time-variable part of the low degree zonal harmonics of Mars gravity field.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.P41F3796R
- Keywords:
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- 6297 Instruments and techniques;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTSDE: 6964 Radio wave propagation;
- RADIO SCIENCEDE: 6979 Space and satellite communication;
- RADIO SCIENCEDE: 6994 Instruments and techniques;
- RADIO SCIENCE