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NASA NTRS · 20250000081

Preliminary Node Separation Orbit Determination Analysis for the HelioSwarm Observatory

Marissa Intelisano·Lisa Policastri·Stephen West·Jim Woodburn·Paul Levinson Muth
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Abstract

The HelioSwarm Observatory is a nine-spacecraft swarm design, consisting of one Hub and eight Node spacecraft co-orbiting the Earth in a ~13.7-day orbit. Each Node separates from the Hub during the Node Commissioning Phase, and the Nodes’ sole source of tracking is inter-satellite relative ranging with the Hub. This study characterizes how soon the relative ranging should occur post-separation to maintain a reasonable knowledge of the Nodes’ position relative to the hub and quantifies how often, and at what measurement cadence, relative ranging needs to occur during the early days of commissioning.

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Marissa Intelisano, Lisa Policastri, Stephen West, Jim Woodburn, Paul Levinson Muth. 2025-01-15. Preliminary Node Separation Orbit Determination Analysis for the HelioSwarm Observatory. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250000081

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