Europa Clipper Mission Design: Interplanetary Trajectory Navigation Analysis

The Europa Clipper mission will explore Europa and investigate its habitability. The mission’s interplanetary trajectory includes flybys of Mars and Earth.We present a flight-path control analysis for navigating this portion of the mission. A summary of results is given to show that the mission for launch in 2024 can be navigated within the given propellant budget. The mission is also subject to requirements for planetary protection. In order to satisfy these requirements, the mission is limiting the probability of impact given failure after each TCM. This limit may be met by altering, or biasing, the trajectory. The biasing strategy is computed with the aid of a constrained minimization problem. The adopted biasing strategy implements biases which are the same for all the days of the launch period.