Rideshare Strategies for Small Mars Missions

Abstract

Frequent low-cost access to Mars can be enabled by taking advantage of the increasing number of rideshare-compatible launches. The cost to manifest a small spacecraft as a secondary can be a small fraction of the cost of a dedicated launch. However, not all rideshare opportunities are equally suitable for a mission to Mars. Much depends on the delivery orbit, mass available, launch date, and propulsion strategy. This paper outlines various mission starting points along with corresponding methods to deliver payloads to Mars from each option. These starting points include low-Earth Orbit (LEO), geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), Lunar transfer orbit (LTO), and Earth escape.