10.1016/j.asr.2025.07.091">
 

Preliminary investigation of multi-body orbit architectures for Mars surface positioning, navigation, and timing

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-3-2025

Abstract

As space-faring countries advance from lunar exploration to Mars exploration, the requirement for persistent position, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities become crucial. This paper proposes several PNT architectures with near constant coverage of the entire Martian surface. Investigated in this research are orbits propagated in the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem (CR3BP) and Bi-Circular Restricted Four-Body Problem (BCR4BP) in the Mars-Phobos system. Trajectories investigated include the Lyapunov, Short Period, Vertical, and Axial periodic orbit families defined with respect to the Mars-Phobos and Sun-Mars-Phobos multi-body systems. Further analysis such as position and geometric dilution of precision, stability, visibility coverage, and PNT system power considerations are conducted on these architectures to narrow options to best performer. For coverage of the equatorial region (±45 degrees), the Vertical family is chosen. For coverage of the entire Martian surface, a constellation consisting of 3 trajectories from the Axial family is the chosen architecture.

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Source Publication

Advances in Space Research (ISSN 0273-1177)

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