Orbit determination methods for interplanetary missions: development and use of the Orbit14 software

Abstract

In the last years, a new generation of interplanetary space missions have been designed for the exploration of the solar system. At the same time, radio-science instrumentation has reached an unprecedented level of accuracy, leading to a significant improvement of our knowledge of celestial bodies. Along with this hardware upgrade, software products for interplanetary missions have been greatly refined. In this context, we introduce Orbit14, a precise orbit determination software developed at the University of Pisa for processing the radio-science data of the BepiColombo and Juno missions. Along the years, many tools have been implemented into the software and Orbit14 capitalized the experience coming from simulations and treatment of real data. In this paper, we present a review of orbit determination methods developed at the University of Pisa for radio-science experiments of interplanetary missions. We describe the basic theory of the process of parameters estimation and refined methods necessary to have full control on experiments involving spacecraft orbiting millions of kilometers far from the Earth. Our aim is to give both an extensive description of the treatment of radio-science experiments and step-to-step instructions for those who are approaching the field of orbit determination in the context of space missions. We show also the work conducted on the Juno and BepiColombo missions by means of the Orbit14 software. In particular, we summarize the recent results obtained with the gravity experiment of Juno and the simulations performed so far for the gravimetry-rotation and relativity experiments of BepiColombo.