Improvement Of The Ephemeris And Mass Of The Martian Moons From MEX Precise Orbit Determination

Statistics – Applications

Scientific paper

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1221 Lunar And Planetary Geodesy And Gravity (5417, 5450, 5714, 5744, 6019, 6250), 6225 Mars, 6230 Martian Satellites

Scientific paper

Because of the much larger eccentricity of the MEX orbit than that of the MGS orbit (eccentricity of 0.6 versus 0.01), MEX is more sensitive to the gravitational attraction of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. From the 2-way Doppler and range data provided by the MEX Radio Science (MaRS) experiment over the last three years, we perform MEX Precise Orbit Determination (POD) in order to improve both moons' ephemeris and mass. We use the GINS software developed by CNES and further adapted at ROB for planetary geodesy applications. We obtain an average precision of 20 meters or less on the MEX positioning around Mars. This represents an improvement by more than a factor 2 with respect to the MEX navigation orbit provided by the flight dynamics team of ESOC. Here, we show the impact of the improved MEX orbit on the Martian Moon ephemerides by using images of the moons taken by the camera (SRC) onboard MEX. We obtain estimates of the masses of Phobos and Deimos with formal errors that are comparable or better than previous estimates from MGS and Mars Odyssey. By using our accurate orbits of MEX, we also estimate the second order coefficients of the gravity field of Phobos, which can be used as a constraint on the internal mass distribution of Phobos.

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