Abstract
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft was occulted by the solar disk on Feb. 19, 1997. During the period between Feb. 7 and March 3, 1997, thespacecraft X-band telecommunications system was used to carry out a combination of engineering and radio science measurements through the solar corona. The engineering results of that experiment are reported. Statistics on the uplink command acceptance rate and downlink frame error rate show that the performance of both links was reasonably good at a sun ‐Earth‐probe (SEP) angle of about 2 deg, but degraded rapidly as the angle fell to 1 deg. Representative open-loop receiver data show moderate dips in downlink carrieramplitude (upto 4dB)at an SEP angleof 3 deg and large dips in downlink carrier amplitude (up to 15 dB) at an SEP angle of 1 deg. Recommendations are given for future solar conjunction events, particularly in the area of ground receiver optimization. The experimental results provide a unique data set useful for the design of future planetary missions.
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