CONSTRUCTING OPTIMIZED OBSERVATIONS – THE SOLAR SYSTEM SCIENCE OPERATIONS LABORATORY

摘要

Planetary Sciences planning activities are often driven by spacecraft technical constraints, such as thermallimitations, link budgets or pointing limitations. Therefore Science Operations Centers when deriving requirementsusually put emphasis in giving the user the tools to deal with such constraints. As necessary as this is scienceparameter requirements are sometimes left in the bottom of the development chain. In order to improve the scienceplanning for planetary missions a prototype of a Science Observation Planning Tool was developed were the focus isput more on the optimization of science goals. This tool allows for parametric analysis of science quantities, togetherwith the most important technical constraints, in order to optimize the observation plan. It is aimed to provide multimissionanalysis capability and to have an extended functionality to larger periods to be used in different parts of thescience planning cycle: from the early study phases to the last week before an observation takes place. It is aimed tosupport both operating missions such as Venus Express, Mars Express and future interplanetary missions like SolarOrbiter, BepiColombo or the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. This paper will outline the capabilities of this tool as wellas its use cases and demonstrate the added value such a tool provides to planetary science missions.