AUTONOMOUS IMAGING OF PHOBOS AND DEIMOS FOR THE PLANET-B MISSION

The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science is currently planning to launch the PLANET-B spacecraft toward Mars, carrying an optical im aging instrument Mars imaging camera, and close-up imaging of Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos is planned. This paper presents analysis of using the optical images as a source in an autonomous, real-time on board navigation scenario. The results obtained here show that radio m etric navigation using ephemerides of Martian satellites will not corr ectly orient the camera. This paper proposes a nonlinear observer as w ell as navigation schemes that provide orbital properties in real time such as ballistic parameters and the phase angle in the B-plane (defi ned as the plane perpendicular to the relative velocity to the target) Special attention is focused on how the camera angle is programmed in the case of spin-stabilized spacecraft like PLANET-B. Also provided i s a new algebraically implemented tracking scheme that is independent of the B-plane properties.