Space may be vast and so large it is often beyond our true comprehension, but our neck of the woods is getting very crowded. Around Earth, there are thousands of satellites both active and inactive often requiring precise control to ensure there are no collisions. While Mars isn't exactly LAX, there are now five different active satellites orbiting it. To prevent any accidental and unfortunate collisions, NASA is now working on a new traffic management system for the Red Planet.
The arrival of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and India's Mars Orbiter Mission, the Red Plant is becoming a very busy interplanetary destination. On top of the five active satellites orbiting Mars, there is also the inactive NASA Mars Global Surveyor, and a couple of moons, making the traffic situation somewhat tricky at times.
According to NASA, this is more than just trying to play it safe. The satellites circling the planet aren't just in the same neighborhood, but they are also in similar intersecting orbits. While the problem is far less complex than keeping control of the skies above Earth, the fact that the satellites are hundreds of millions of miles away makes it even trickier.
This isn't just some sort of abstract concern scribbled onto a piece of paper by a scientists. ON January 3, there were worries that the MAVEN and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) would pass within two miles of one another. Later calculations determined that this wouldn't occur, but the fact that the possibility existed highlighted the need for some sort of traffic control system.
While Earth satellites can be tracked precisely, ones orbiting Mars are tracked using calculations and NASA's Deep Space Network. While this allows for very accurate predictions and calculations, there is some amount of uncertainty when dealing with five satellites. This means that future Mars orbiters need to be tracked much closer, which is part of the DSN's job, and the new traffic management system be able to fine tune.
"It's a monitoring function to anticipate when traffic will get heavy," says Joseph Guinn, manager of Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mission Design and Navigation Section. "When two spacecraft are predicted to come too close to one another, we give people a heads-up in advance so the project teams can start coordinating about whether any maneuvers are needed."
The goal is to maintain a close watch on the orbiters already circling the Red Planet while at the same time develop methods for expanding the system as more and more spacecraft arrive. Collision avoidance is part of NASA's Multi-Mission Automated Deep Space Conjunction Assessment Process, and it will allow the space agency to determine whether there are any risks in advance to give scientists and mission specialists time to write new command codes and transmit new maneuvers to their crafts to avoid collisions.
According to NASA, this improvement in traffic management will not only reduce the danger of collisions, but it will also allow orbiters to work more closely together to jointly study Mars.
