Abstract:

Error propagation analysis of capture for Mars exploration is an important issue to be considered, which has a direct impact on the success of the task. In terms of three different capture strategies, considering many sources of error such as the initial state error, model error, execution error, propagation equations of states’ mean and standard deviation value are established with the covariance analysis describing equation technique (CADET). When simulating the whole capture process, considering one simulation error each time and combined errors at last, and results of CADET are compared with Monte Carlo method. The simulation result shows that the CADET can yield high-precision results along with lower computation cost, demonstrating its better engineering application value, which can serve as a reference for the implementation plan of orbit capturing phase of Chinese incoming Mars exploration.