Engineering topics
Schulze, William
Publications and source records attributed to Schulze, William.
50,000 Laps Around Mars: Navigating the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Through the Extended Missions (January 2009 - March 2017)
Orbiting Mars since March 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft continues to perform valuable science observations, provide telecommunication relay for surface assets, and characterize landing sites for future missions. Previous papers reported on the navigation of MRO from interplanetary cruise through the end of the Primary Science Phase (PSP) in December 2008 and on maneuvers performed through November 2016. This paper highlights the navigation of MRO from January 2009 through its 50,000th orbit around Mars on March 27, 2017, an eight-year period covering the Extended Science Phase, the first three extended missions, and a portion of the fourth extended mission which began on October 1, 2016. Since the beginning of the PSP in November 2006, MRO’s navigation performance has continued to exceed expectations. Over that period of time, the mission has returned over 300 terabytes of data.
MONTE's Client-Based Trajectory Propagation Architecture
The Mission Analysis, Operations, and Navigation Toolkit Environment (MONTE) is JPL's (Jet Propulsion Laboratory's) signature astrodynamic computing platform. It supports all phases of space mission development, from early stage mission design and analysis through flight navigation services. MONTE employs a client-based trajectory propagation architecture where accelerations are calculated in the main MONTE library and the integrator exists on the periphery as a client. This paper outlines this approach to a trajectory propagation system and provides a concrete set of examples showing its utility.
MONTE Python for Deep Space Navigation
The Mission Analysis, Operations, and Navigation Toolkit Environment (MONTE) is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) signature astrodynamic computing platform. It was built to support JPL’s deep space exploration program, and has been used to fly robotic spacecraft to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ceres, and many solar system small bodies. At its core, MONTE consists of low-level astrodynamic libraries that are written in C++ and presented to the end user as an importable Python language module. These libraries form the basis on which Python-language applications are built for specific astrodynamic applications, such as trajectory design and optimization, orbit determination, flight path control, and more. The first half of this paper gives context to the MONTE project by outlining its history, the field of deep space navigation and where MONTE fits into the current Python landscape. The second half gives an overview of the main MONTE libraries and provides a narrative example of how it can be used for astrodynamic analysis.