Abstract
The New Horizons mission performed a successful flyby of Arrokoth, a distant Kuiper-Belt Object, on January 1, 2019, representing the farthest planetary encounter to date. The navigation strategy and performance required to deliver the spacecraft to the desired flyby target were driven by a number of challenges including those related to Arrokoth’s viewing angle and relatively recent discovery in June 2014. These and other challenges required the New Horizons science and navigation teams to devise a strategy in close collaboration that would substantially reduce the flyby navigation errors. Earth-based astrometry and occultation measurements of Arrokoth were collected and used to estimate Arrokoth’s orbit and its associated uncertainties, which were in turn used to inform and reduce navigation approach and flyby uncertainties. The New Horizons navigation effort used these a priori orbits along with radio metric and optical navigation measurements to first predict the navigation performance in support of the flyby design, and then estimate New Horizons’ trajectory, maneuvers and other filter state parameters during navigation operations. An overview of the Arrokoth orbit estimation and navigation strategy and predicted performance, as well as the operational results from the initial target search campaign in 2004 through Arrokoth’s successful flyby in 2019 are presented, along with the principal challenges and most important lessons learned along the way.
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Notes
More information on the B-Plane definition and coordinates can be found in Bauman et al. (2020).
The New Horizons navigation team uses the nomenclature OD### to label and number each OD delivery.
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Acknowledgements
The navigation of New Horizons to its successful flyby of Arrokoth was the combined effort of dozens of engineers and scientists spanning multiple teams. The authors would like to specifically acknowledge Alice Bowman and the New Horizons mission operations team, Ann Harch and the New Horizons science planning team, the New Horizons GNC team, Chris Hersman and the New Horizons spacecraft systems team, and Helene Winters and Glen Fountain for mission management support. In addition, the authors thank the HST and Gaia missions, the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), and NASA’s Deep Space Network for their extended support that was fundamental to the Arrokoth orbit estimation and navigation efforts and success. This paper was carried out by members of KinetX Inc., Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics (SNAFD) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and was funded under sub-contract with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and SwRI.
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Note by the Editor: This is a Special Communication, linked to the Topical Volume on New Horizons in Space Science Reviews, Volume 140. In addition to invited review papers and topical collections, Space Science Reviews publishes unsolicited Special Communications. These are papers linked to an earlier topical volume/collection, report-type papers, or timely papers dealing with a strong space-science-technology combination (such papers summarize the science and technology of an instrument or mission in one paper).
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Nelson, D.S., Pelletier, F.J., Buie, M.W. et al. Navigation and Orbit Estimation for New Horizons’ Arrokoth Flyby: Overview, Results and Lessons Learned. Space Sci Rev 218, 11 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-022-00877-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-022-00877-4