Two interplanetary missions have successfully used aerobraking to provide a velocity change of 1200 m/s. The first was the Magellan mission to Venus, where atmospheric drag was used to shrink the orbit late in the extended mission. The second was the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission to Mars. Both of these missions required extensive commanding from the ground in order to keep the activities on the spacecraft, especially those during the pass through the atmosphere, synchronized with the actual orbit. This paper will summarize some recent work to automate most of the commanding intensive activities associated with aerobraking.
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