Design of Mars global longitudinal coverage constellation leveraging resonant and periodic orbits in Mars-Phobos-Deimos system

Abstract

Over the last decades, the exploration of Phobos and Deimos has acquired relevance from both scientific and human missions standpoint. Both moons can play a key role on supporting the Martian Exploration program improving teleoperation capabilities and infrastructure support. The purpose of this work is to propose a different approach to the problem of global longitudinal coverage of Mars, exploiting the characteristic of natural satellites of the planet itself. The proposed constellation can be an alternative to the Mars Areostationary Orbit (MAO), in fact, three satellites equally spaced at Deimos height are enough to provide global longitudinal coverage, with a reduced cost. The main source of perturbation at areostationary height is due to the second degree, second order sectorial harmonic of Mars gravitational field (J2,2), which requires high maintenance cost for an equivalent configuration in MAO. By leveraging Lyapunov orbits in the Mars-Deimos perturbed Three Body Problem, it’s possible to achieve long term stable orbits with lower cost, as well as ballistic orbits with bounded variations. The characteristics and the performance of the constellation are analyzed, as well as the transfer orbits between the Mars-Deimos Lagrange points leveraging resonant orbits. The possibility of placing an extra satellite in an orbit around Phobos with the purpose of increasing performance is also detailed, as well as the transfer trajectory from the Deimos L3 point to a DRO orbit around Phobos.