Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Collins, D. H..
This paper starts with a brief overview of typical issues in both interplanetary spacecraft design and microspacecraft design, and then it focuses on specific challenges that have been recently encountered.
NASA's Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) mission to P/Tempel 2 is described with attention given to CRAF spacecraft design. Infrared/visible spectrometers, dust counters, magnetometers, and plasma-wave analyzers are an integral part of the CRAF payload. CRAF's subsystems consist of the following: (1) a structure subsystem, (2) a temperature control subsystem, (3) a propulsion module subsystem, (4) an attitude control subsystem, (5) a command and data subsystem, (6) a radio frequency subsystem, and (7) a power and pyrotechnics subsystem. It is concluded that the CRAF mission will enable the first detailed study of the cometary nucleus.