The achievement of the desired accuracies in estimating Mercury's rotational parameters in the frame of the radio science experiment hosted on board ESA's BepiColombo mission strongly depends upon a scrupulous analysis of the most suitable observations. In this case, observables are constituted by images captured by the High Resolution Imaging Channel (HRIC) depicting the same portion of the surface at two different epochs which, opportunely georeferenced and transposed in an inertial reference frame, provide information on the displacement of the features identified in the images and thus on the rotation of the planet. The critical part in the accomplishment of the experiment is represented by the fact that observations will be limited by mission constraints and therefore selection criteria need to be applied to filter the database and choose the ones characterized by the highest information content. Hence, screening parameters could be illumination conditions or altitude variations between images to be compared in order to favor their matching, rather than a temporal gap allowing to observe a consistent change in libration. All these aspects are encompassed in a global simulator of the experiment, deemed to be the most effective way to analyze the problem. The final aim of the software is to converge toward a solution ensuring the maximum scientific output with the minimum number of observations. In order to do so, the simulator first generates a database of the spacecraft ground tracks, selects the dataset of observations and implements an optimization algorithm. In parallel to the analyses performed using the optimizator, other independent simulations have been run so as to investigate on the minimum number of observations needed to obtain the desired accuracies. Hence, while the last ones provides an hint on the quantity of measurements needed, the end-to-end simulator is aimed at individuating the most favorable strategy of observation, in terms of epochs and surface features. © 2013 2013 California Institute of Technology.
Observations planning optimization for BepiColombo's Mercury rotation experiment / A., Palli; Meriggiola, Rachele; Iess, Luciano; P., Tortora. - STAMPA. - 148:(2013), pp. 2891-2907. (Intervento presentato al convegno 23rd AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting, Spaceflight Mechanics 2013 tenutosi a Kauai, HI nel 10 February 2013 through 14 February 2013).
Observations planning optimization for BepiColombo's Mercury rotation experiment
MERIGGIOLA, RACHELE;IESS, Luciano;
2013
Abstract
The achievement of the desired accuracies in estimating Mercury's rotational parameters in the frame of the radio science experiment hosted on board ESA's BepiColombo mission strongly depends upon a scrupulous analysis of the most suitable observations. In this case, observables are constituted by images captured by the High Resolution Imaging Channel (HRIC) depicting the same portion of the surface at two different epochs which, opportunely georeferenced and transposed in an inertial reference frame, provide information on the displacement of the features identified in the images and thus on the rotation of the planet. The critical part in the accomplishment of the experiment is represented by the fact that observations will be limited by mission constraints and therefore selection criteria need to be applied to filter the database and choose the ones characterized by the highest information content. Hence, screening parameters could be illumination conditions or altitude variations between images to be compared in order to favor their matching, rather than a temporal gap allowing to observe a consistent change in libration. All these aspects are encompassed in a global simulator of the experiment, deemed to be the most effective way to analyze the problem. The final aim of the software is to converge toward a solution ensuring the maximum scientific output with the minimum number of observations. In order to do so, the simulator first generates a database of the spacecraft ground tracks, selects the dataset of observations and implements an optimization algorithm. In parallel to the analyses performed using the optimizator, other independent simulations have been run so as to investigate on the minimum number of observations needed to obtain the desired accuracies. Hence, while the last ones provides an hint on the quantity of measurements needed, the end-to-end simulator is aimed at individuating the most favorable strategy of observation, in terms of epochs and surface features. © 2013 2013 California Institute of Technology.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
