AAS 98-107

INCORPORATING ICY SATELLITE FLYBYS IN THE CASSINI ORBITAL TOUR

A. A. Wolf - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Abstract

The Cassini satellite tour is a series of orbits in which flybys of Titan are used to shape and control the trajectory. Achieving flybys of Saturn's less massive icy satellites is an important tour objective; however, icy satellite flybys must be achieved essentially "on the way" from one Titan flyby to another, because they can make only small changes in the spacecraft's orbit. This makes achieving close flybys of icy satellites a challenge requiring new methods in satellite tour design. Techniques developed to assist trajectory designers in maximizing the number of icy satellite flybys in Cassini tours are described here.

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