Mars Express going Gyroless - Impact on science operations systems
Abstract
Mars Express was originally designed to explore Mars for a period of 1 Martian year. The mission has been very successful and has been extended in several occasions and today it has been flying for more than 15 years. Due to its long lifetime in space the gyros had started to degrade, and a decision was made to extend the spacecraft lifetime by developing a new AOCS software to allow for switching off the gyros during an extended part of the operations, thereby reducing the duty cycle of the IMUs. As such change impacts the way the spacecraft is operated and the science operations are run, we describe the main science operations changes, those related to the science planning activities and tools, for uplink and downlink.
- Publication:
-
European Planetary Science Congress
- Pub Date:
- September 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018EPSC...12.1048M