Aerocapture at Titan and Neptune: Navigation Sensitivity Study

I. Abstract This paper examines the sensitivity of the dead-reckoning navigation algorithm during aerocapture navigation to various accelerometer and gyro measurement errors (biases, random noise, etc.) provided by an on-board inertial measurement unit, as well as sensitivity to initial state knowledge uncertainties at the initiation of aerocapture at both Titan and Neptune. The navigation sensitivity is examined at the apoapsis of the post-aerocapture orbit. Navigation errors are shown to be most sensitive to accelerometer bias and scale factor error, and initial attitude uncertainty.