What in tarnation is a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO)?
For those wondering what I'm waving my hands about these days about here's a THREAD about what a DRO is and why it may be something you hear a lot more of soon... (1/n)
A DRO is a long term STABLE orbit for a very small mass object around the smaller of two much larger bodies that are in a two-body orbital system. As the Earth has a Moon, one could place a spacecraft in a DRO of the Moon. (2/n) web.archive.org/web/2015011122…
The general parameters of a DRO are about +/- 70000km form the Moon along the axis to the Earth and between 70000-110000km on the perpendicular axis. The period is around 13-14 days. This is why it's call 'distant'.
Most lunar orbits can be rather unstable due to MASCONS, require periodic station keeping (fuel). A DRO offers a stable (decades+), low cost place to come and park your spacecraft or asteroid of that matter. (3/n) science.nasa.gov/science-news/s…
A DRO of the Moon as seen from above orbits around the Earth-Moon L1 and L2 points and is called retrograde as it orbits in the direction opposite of the Moon's orbital motion around Earth. From Earth it would appear to move around the Moon in a periodic manner over weeks. (4/n)
#NASA plans on placing the first SLS EM-1 mission into a DRO. If #Change5 is now presently in a DRO then it would be the first time a man made object has used such an orbit. (5/n) ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/…
What else could a DRO be used for? If you wanted to bring something from deep space you could park it in a Lunar DRO fairly cheaply. Say you had an asteroid you wanted to mine? (6/n) nasa.gov/content/what-i…
If China has sent #Change5 into deep space Earth-Sun L1 point over 1.5 million km away return to the Earth-Moon system, used the Moon's gravity in two encounters to navigate to a DRO it would be an impressive demonstration of astrogation.
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Update on the Chinese 'spaceplane' monitoring effort. @plugger_lockett observed possible emissions from objects from the 2023-195 launch. Despite using the same modulations it turns out these emissions are from other secret Chinese military sats, raising more questions. 🧵⬇️
Upon fixing a minor timing issue with his ground station @plugger_lockett sent me data from a pass yesterday & I was able to determine that the object being tracked yesterday was in fact YAOGAN-30 X the track of which passed over one of 2023-195. ⬇️
I went back and looked at the erroneously timestamped data from the passes we thought detected OBJECT D and E finding that if I adjusted the timing YAOGAN-30 AA and YAOGAN-30 R passed closely to the track of these objects. ⬇️
Moon rise here at the station. As the Moon clears the trees, an "Emergency" was declared by @roscosmos for #Luna25 as it failed to perform an orbital adjustment burn. Lets discuss how this could affect the mission. 🧵⬇️
A telegram post by @roscosmos provides limited information of the status of #Luna25. Apparently, the spacecraft failed to adjust its orbit as planned.⬇️
Russian controllers now need to troubleshoot and fix the issue. This is complicated by their lack of a global deep space communications network. So recovery efforts will be limited to when the Moon is visible over Russia due to their geopolitical misadventures... ⬇️
Thus far I have no independent observations of the mission to share. That is not without extensive trying to observe it.
So why am I not detecting anything? 🧵⬇️
#Luna25 was launched into a trajectory that is largely only visible on Earth in daylight. Secondly, that trajectory is not exactly known. I have calculated one based on the launch timing and the scant public info shared and used GMAT to find a good direct trajectory. ⬇️
The trajectory isn't arbitrary. You need to carefully line things up to the extreme to get anywhere close to the Moon. So it constrains where to look. As we're looking into the glare of the Sun, we need radio. ITU records report two bands, X and Ku-band. But wait...⬇️
A follower asked if #Chandrayaan3 could land on the Moon before #Luna25. The short answer is maybe.
As we'll see in this thread changing a plan as complex as landing on the Moon is not a great idea.🧵⬇️
#Chandrayaan3 is presently largely locked into an orbital plane above the Moon. What that means is that it needs to wait for the Moon to rotate under-neigh it to reach the primary landing site that @isro has painstakingly planned to land at. ⬇️
Therefore, if you want to rush to get to the landing site it's too late. Therefore, you need to pick a new landing site under up coming terrain that may be suitable and also change the mission plan. Recalculate, adjust and then execute. ⬇️
Despite my better judgement, I did a TLE update on the Doppler data. The problem with TLEs in these types of orbits is they degenerate fast as the model is not designed to deal with long periods et. al. 🧵⬇️
Small changes in the data or the fit has profound effects on the TLE and the orbital model. But they are convenient. So I offer a couple of TLEs to aid anyone wishing to hunt for #Chandrayaan3. NO WARRANTY offered 😉, look with WIDE field... ⬇️
Data fit to released orbital parameters:
1 57320U 23213.95526600 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 04
2 57320 21.4000 180.4625 9648325 12.6358 39.3505 0.10345282 04
# 20230801.30-20230802.61, 53466 measurements, 0.005 kHz rms⬇️
I've recently renewed an observing campaign on #TIANWEN1. The orbit hasn't changed so an aerobrake test claimed for late 2022 has not occurred yet. In preparation for observing an aerobraking manoeuvre I thought it would be interesting to study past missions that did one. 🧵⬇️
Aerobraking is used to allow a spacecraft to lower its apopasis by using a planet's atmosphere to decelerate the spacecraft as it passes through the tenuous upper atmosphere of the planet at periapsis at just the right altitude as not to cook the spacecraft and max. drag. ⬇️