Mars Global Surveyor: Aerobraking Mission Overview

The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft was launched on November 6, 1996 and was captured into a highly elliptical, 45 hour orbit around Mars with a 973 m/s propulsive maneuver on September 12, 1997. A four month aerobraking phase was supposed to remove another 1200 m/s in order to circularize the orbit. Unfortunately, one of the two solar wings was damaged during deployment just after launch when the deployment damper failed. This paper will describe what has happened so far in order to achieve the original mission objectives and will discuss the plans for the future of the Mars Global Surveyor Spacecraft. A Brief History: Immediately after launch, telemetry indicated that one of the two solar wings had failed to latch. Each of the two Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft wings is comprised of two solar panels and a drag flap (as shown in Figure 1). The preliminary failure model that explained the post-launch solar panel deployment anomaly-was that the damper shaft had sheared off durin