Gabriel Lundin

Future Mars exploration projects could benefit from the use of satellites in areostationary orbits as they allow relatively effective and simple setup of satellite communication arrays, a necessary piece of infrastructure for crewed Martian missions. Stationary orbits are well understood about Earth, but little literature exists analyzing them about Mars. Previous research is sparse, with the most comprehensive study extending to a baseline control analysis using Model Predictive Control (MPC). This unoptimized mission plan requires prohibitively high fuel for most longitudes. Optimization of orbit control is needed to enable potential missions at any longitude and thus anywhere of interest on the Martian surface. In this study, optimization of satellite missions utilizing areostationary Mars orbits (AMO) was performed using 2 separate approaches. Both approaches used a simulation with a comprehensive model of the Martian gravitational field and perturbations from other celestial bodies. A MPC law used by previous research was tuned through several parameter sweeps at different longitudes. The AMO itself was optimized using a solution to the orbital equations of motion that maintains stationary quality while reducing required control effort. The fuel cost for both optimized missions were compared to that of a standard MPC mission of the same length. It was found that both methods reduced fuel cost; however, neither was effective enough to reduce it to a practical level at the majority of longitudes. Further research is needed into other optimization alternatives before such missions can be performed.