Ephemerides of the Major Saturnian Satellites--Current Status, Future Prospects

Details Ephemerides of the Major Saturnian Satellites--Current Status, Future Prospects Ephemerides of the Major Saturnian Satellites--Current Status, Future Prospects

May 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dda....41.0805j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #41, #8.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.933

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Our development of Saturnian satellite ephemerides began in the late 1970s to support the September 1979 Pioneer 11 Saturn flyby and continued with improvements needed for the Voyager missions in November 1980 and August 1981 and the Cassini Tour from July 2004 to June 2008. We are at present working in conjunction with the Cassini Equinox mission scheduled to end in September 2010. The ephemerides are derived from a numerical integration (replacing the analytical theories used for Pioneer 11 and Voyager) fit to an extensive set of Earthbased and spacecraft based observations. Cassini has contributed nearly 5000 imaging observations, a significant increase over the 600 from the Voyager flybys. Moreover, the Cassini data are highly accurate and cover multiple orbits of the satellites. In addition, Cassini has had 68 Titan flybys as well as flybys of every major satellite except Mimas. Tracking of the spacecraft through the flybys provides satellite position measurements at the km level. Spacecraft tracking throughout the mission together with the observed satellite dynamical interactions has also led to improvements in our knowledge of the gravitation environment of the Saturnian system. That improved knowledge is crucial to our ephemeris development. We assess the accuracy of our ephemerides over the Cassini time frame at 5 to 10 km for all satellites except Titan whose ephemeris is known to better than 1 km. Cassini will begin its Solstice mission in September with a planned end in mid-2017. That mission calls for 54 Titan and 11 Enceladus flybys. As a cost saving measure, only a minimal number of imaging observations for ephemeris maintenance will be made. Consequently, our work on the ephemerides effectively concludes with the Equinox mission. If absolutely necessary, small corrections will be made during the Solstice mission, but under our current projections such corrections are unlikely.

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