CHEM 112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Orbit Determination, Weather Satellite, Apsis
Document Summary
Mars climate orbiter mishap investigation board phase i report. Accessed 2011 9 nov: the mars climate orbiter (mco)was a robotic space probe launched by nasa on. The mission was to orbit mars as the first interplanetary weather satellite and to act as the communications relay in the mars surveyor "98 program, for. Launch of mco towards mars concerns existed at the working level about discrepancies observed between navigation solutions three orbit determination schemes were employed. Trajectory correction maneuver-4 (tcm-4) was executed start of the mars orbit insertion (moi) burn. But further investigation found that the trajectory of the mco was computed incorrectly, and its initial periapsis was within 57 km of the surface. Its altitude was too low for survival, so it likely disintegrated due to atmospheric stresses: the main cause was the failure to use metric units in the flight system software.
