Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Bell, J. L..
The Mars Odyssey spacecraft was inserted into a highly elliptical capture orbit about Mars on October 24, 2001. This paper details the strategy, implementation, and results of the aerobraking phase of the mission.
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The 2001 Mars Odyssey Mission has returned an Orbiter to Mars to map the planet and search for water. This paper will present an overview of the Navigation performance, with a comparison of the pre-launch requirements and expected performance to the in-flight experience.
Six mission phases are defined to describe the periods of activities during the orbiter nominal mission.
This paper contains just a sampling of the many potential future Mars missions.
Galileo has received approval for a two-year follow-on mission, called the Galileo Europa (GEM). A three-phase tour has been designed for GEM that includes eight Europa encounters, four Callisto flybys, and two Io encounters to end the GEM in Decemger 1999. Although science desires for the satallite encountes were of primary importance to the tour design, the flyby conditions were also necessarily selected on the basis of the gravity assist they contributed to the trajectory. The tour design was heavily influenced by the requirement to return to Io, since the radiation exposure that acompanies such a flyby may serverely degrade the health of the spacecraft.
The orbital tour trajectory that was selected for the Galileo mission includes ten close flybys of the Galilean satellites Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, additional distant flybys of these satellites, lo torous observations, and many other events that provide broad opportunities for scientific observations.
Method improves resistance of CIS-1,4-poly(butadiene) elastomers to attack by oxygen difluoride at low temperatures by replacing silica reinforcement with less reactive substances. Improved elastomeric compound is utilized in bladders, diaphragms, valves, O-rings and seals.