Abstract
Although most of the concepts presented in this book can be applied to any spaceflight mission, there are some endeavors which have very special requirements and challenges. Chapter 7 deals with these specific cases. The first section presents the additional requirements and conceptual adaptations which are required to put a human being on board of a spacecraft. The second section deals with robotic missions. Operating mechanically moveable elements in space leads to very specific problems and challenges, which are described in more detail. Leaving the gravitational field of the earth requires also some special considerations, which are covered in section three. Finally we deal in the fourth section with lander operations, which require another vast field of demanding skills and knowledge.
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Notes
- 1.
In fact, depending of the distance to Earth, the apparent motion of the spacecraft in the sky is not completely negligible, as it is typically of the order of a fraction of a degree over the duration of a ground station pass (typically 12 h). This has to be taken into account when calculating the antenna pointing angles: in particular the movement of the spacecraft over a period equivalent to twice the signal propagation delay is important, as it affects the determination of the optimal pointing.
- 2.
Gravity losses is a term to indicate the reduced efficiency of a manoeuvre if the manoeuvre is not performed fully in the optimal point in the orbit (driven by the “rocket equation”). An instantaneous manoeuvre would have zero gravity losses, i.e., its fuel efficiency would be perfect. Typical chemical propulsion systems require of course a finite time to perform the manoeuvre: the smaller their engine thrust, the longer the manoeuvre. The longer the duration of the manoeuvre, the larger are the “gravity losses,” i.e., the fuel efficiency of the manoeuvre is smaller.
- 3.
AU stands for “astronomical unit” and equals the average distance Earth to Sun [~150 million km].
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Campan, J., Uhlig, T., Herrmann, D., Sellmaier, F., Ferri, P., Ulamec, S. (2015). Special Topics. In: Uhlig, T., Sellmaier, F., Schmidhuber, M. (eds) Spacecraft Operations. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1803-0_7
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