Design and performance of a Martian autonomous navigation system based on a smallsat constellation

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel smallsat constellation design for autonomous Martian polar region navigation, emphasizing inter-satellite links for accurate positioning and reduced ground support, enhancing Mars exploration capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a new constellation architecture with coherent inter-satellite links that improve navigation accuracy and autonomy for Martian polar exploration missions.

Findings

The constellation achieves high-precision positioning with minimal ground support.

Coherent inter-satellite links effectively mitigate clock instabilities.

Different semi-major axis configurations offer tailored coverage of Martian polar regions.

Abstract

Deciphering the genesis and evolution of the Martian polar caps can provide crucial understanding of Mars' climate system. The growing scientific interest for the exploration of Mars at high latitudes, and the need of minimizing the resources onboard landers and rovers, motivates the need for adequate navigation support from orbit. We propose a novel concept based on a constellation that can support autonomous navigation of different kind of users devoted to scientific investigations of those regions. We study two constellations, that differ mainly for the semi-major axis, composed of 5 small satellites (based on the SmallSats design being developed in Argotec), offering dedicated coverage of the Mars polar regions. We focus on the architecture of the inter-satellite links (ISL), the key elements providing both ephemerides and time synchronization for the broadcasting of the navigation message. Our concept is based on suitably configured coherent links, able to suppress the adverse effects of on-board clock instabilities and to provide excellent range-rate accuracies between the constellation's nodes. The data quality allows attaining good positioning performance for both constellations with a largely autonomous system. Indeed, we show that ground support can be heavily reduced by employing an ISL communication architecture.