Designing planetary protection into the Mars observer mission

Abstract

Planetary protection has been an important consideration during the process of designing the Mars Observer mission. It affected trajectory design of both the interplanetary transfer and the orbits at Mars; these in turn affected the observation strategies developed for the mission. The Project relied mainly on the strategy of collision avoidance to prevent contamination of Mars. Conservative estimates of spacecraft reliability and Martian atmosphere density were used to evaluate decisions concerning the interplanetary trajectory, the orbit insertion phase at Mars, and operations in orbit at Mars and afterwards. Changes in the trajectory design, especially in the orbit insertion phase, required a refinement of those estimates.