ANALYZING FEASIBILITY OF OPTICAL COMMUNICATION OBSERVABLES FOR NAVIGATION

Future deep-space missions are intending to utilize optical communications and thereby take advantage of superior data delivery rates. The same laser-based links could also be used for interplanetary navigation. Two main optical tracking types could be used for this purpose. The first is optical ranging that uses active optical systems at both ends of the link, as opposed to passive systems. The second is optical astrometry, where a telescope images the spacecraft laser against a star background and thereby resolves plane-of-sky position. These data types offer similar capabilities to the radiometric techniques used for current interplanetary missions. These missions have a variety of objectives and requirements, which impacts trajectory determination and the necessary data types. This paper discusses the formulation of the data types and their success in meeting mission requirements for two mission scenarios: a network of spacecraft in orbit about Mars and a spacecraft in a halo orbit at the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point.