VALIDATION OF LINEAR COVARIANCE ANALYSIS FOR NOVA-C CISLUNAR TRAJECTORY DESIGN

Nova-C is a lunar lander designed by the private company Intuitive Machines to deliver small commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon. The first Nova-C lander is manifested on the IM-1 mission in early 2022. A nominal deterministic trajectory for the mission is being designed using NASA’s Copernicus software. In this paper, linear covariance (LinCov) is used to assess orbit determination (OD) performance based on the nominal trajectory and a selected ground-station tracking schedule. An assessment of OD performance for key mission events including trajectory correction maneuvers (TCMs), lunar approach and lunar orbit insertion (LOI), and descent orbit insertion (DOI) are presented. LinCov analysis is also used to assess trajectory dispersion at each of these key mission events. Monte Carlo analysis is employed to validate these results. The long-term goal of this research is to develop and validate a fully integrated LinCov tool to simultaneously determine trajectory dispersion, OD performance, and maneuver delta-v dispersion.