Rosetta Navigation at its Mars Swing-By

Abstract

This paper reports on the navigation activities during Rosetta s Mars swing-by. It covers the Mars approach phase starting after a deterministic deep-space maneuver in September 2006, the swing-by proper on 25 February 2007, and ends with another deterministic deep-space maneuver in April 2007 which was also foreseen to compensate any navigation error. Emphasis is put on the orbit determination and prediction set-up and the evolution of the targeting estimates in the B-plane and their adjustments by trajectory correction maneuvers.