Development and Evaluation of an Operational Aerobraking Strategy for Mars Odyssey

The Mars 2001 Odyssey Orbiter successfully completed the aerobraking phase of its mission on 11 January 2002. The support provided by NASA’s Langley Research Center to the navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, in the planning and operational support of Mars Odyssey aerobraking is discussed. Specifically, the development of a three-degree-of-freedom aerobraking trajectory simulation and its application to both preflight planning activities and operations is described. The importance of running the simulation in a Monte Carlo fashion to capture the effects of mission and atmospheric uncertainties is demonstrated, and the utility of including predictive logic within the simulation that could mimic operational maneuver decision making is shown. A description is also provided of how the simulation was adapted to support flight operations as both a validation and risk reduction tool and as a means of obtaining a statistical basis for maneuver strategy decisions. This latter application was the first use of Monte Carlo trajectory analysis in an aerobraking mission.