Microwave systems applications in deep space telecommunications and navigation: Space Exploration Initiative architectures

The US Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) calls for the charting of a new and evolving manned course to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The fundamental SEI support objectives are to provide the mission with means to monitor and control mission elements, acquire engineering, science, and navigation data, compute state vectors and navigate, and move these data efficiently and automatically between mission nodes for timely analysis and decision-making. Microwave links provide the means to communicate between system nodes, and the essential radio metrics to navigate; later, these probably will be augmented with optical links. The general mission telecommunications and navigation support requirements and resulting architectures for SEI mission support are described, and then the implications of these on the role of microwave technology in these architectures, particularly for Mars exploration support, are discussed.< >