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Frauenholz, Raymond B.

Publications and source records attributed to Frauenholz, Raymond B..

Maneuver Design for the Juno Mission: Inner Cruise

The Juno spacecraft launched in August 2011 and, following a successful Earth flyby in October 2013, is on course for a nominal orbit insertion at Jupiter in July 2016. This paper examines the design and execution of deterministic and statistical trajectory correction maneuvers during the first approximately 27 months of post-launch operations that defined the "Inner Cruise" phase of the Juno mission. Topics of emphasis include the two deep space maneuvers, Earth flyby altitude biasing strategy, and the sequence of trajectory correction maneuvers executed in the weeks prior to the successful Earth gravity assist.

Pavlak, Thomas A.↗

The role of predicted solar activity in TOPEX/Poseidon orbit maintenance maneuver design

Following launch in June 1992, the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite will be placed in a near-circular frozen orbit at an altitude of about 1336 km. Orbit maintenance maneuvers are planned to assure all nodes of the 127-orbit 10-day repeat ground track remain within a 2 km equatorial longitude bandwidth. Orbit determination, maneuver execution, and atmospheric drag prediction errors limit overall targeting performance. This paper focuses on the effects of drag modeling errors, with primary emphasis on the role of SESC solar activity predictions, especially the 27-day outlook of the 10.7 cm solar flux and geomagnetic index used by a simplified version of the Jacchia-Roberts density model developed for this TOPEX/Poseidon application. For data evaluated from 1983-90, the SESC outlook performed better than a simpler persistence strategy, especially during the first 7-10 days. A targeting example illustrates the use of ground track biasing to compensate for expected orbit predictions errors, emphasizing the role of solar activity prediction errors.

Frauenholz, Raymond B.↗

Navigating highly elliptical earth orbiters with simultaneous VLBI from orthogonal baseline pairs

Navigation strategies for determining highly elliptical orbits with VLBI are described. The predicted performance of wideband VLBI and Delta VLBI measurements obtained by orthogonal baseline pairs are compared for a 16-hr equatorial orbit. It is observed that the one-sigma apogee position accuracy improves two orders of magnitude to the meter level when Delta VLBI measurements are added to coherent Doppler and range, and the simpler VLBI strategy provides nearly the same orbit accuracy. The effects of differential measurement noise and acquisition geometry on orbit accuracy are investigated. The data reveal that quasar position uncertainty limits the accuracy of wideband Delta VLBI measurements, and that polar motion and baseline uncertainties and offsets between station clocks affect the wideband VLBI data. It is noted that differential one-way range (DOR) has performance nearly equal to that of the more complex Delta DOR and is recommended for use on spacecraft in high elliptical orbits.

Frauenholz, Raymond B.↗