ExoMars Alternative Escape Trajectories with Soyuz/Fregat

Abstract

The objectives of ExoMars are to inject an orbiter around Mars and to land a rover on the surface to look for possible traces of life. During the first stages of the feasibility analysis, the mass margin of the orbiter was very small for a direct transfer in the Soyuz/Fregat scenario. An analysis of the combined use of lunar swing-bys and the Sun gravity gradient is performed with WESBOT in order to obtain alternative trajectories for injecting higher mass into Mars transfer. WESBOT is a GMV tool to find WSB transfers to the Moon and to design escape trajectories by performing several swing-bys with the Moon and the Earth. The weak stability boundary has been successfully used for lunar transfers (Hiten, SMART-1). For escape trajectories from the Earth, the potential mass gains depend on the escape direction and the departure date to make a series of gravity assists with the help of the Sun gravity gradient to save DeltaV. Several strategies are studied depending on the number and order of swing-bys. The departing conditions (date and orbit) are optimized but the arrival date to Mars is maintained because of mission requirements. For each type of strategy, a systematic search of initial guess trajectories is performed. The initial guess trajectory is made up of patched conics arcs and multiple shooting arcs when necessary. The optimal trajectories for the various scenarios are presented and show different morphologies. An analysis in terms of applicability to the ExoMars mission is included.

Earth–Mars transfers with ballistic escape and low-thrust capture

“…However, it would be desirable to explicitly exploit the presence of the Moon, at least in its neighborhood. Ballistic escape trajectories may take advantage of Moon gravity assists to reduce the trans-Mars injection cost [34]. Therefore, a Moon-perturbed SunEarth problem is formulated.…”