Patched-Conic Mission to Mars, Pad to Orbit

Design a complete 2028 Mars orbiter mission with patched conics — and measure where the model breaks.

Take one transfer from your 2028 launch period and turn it into a mission: a parking orbit that contains the launch asymptote, an injection burn, a heliocentric cruise, a B-plane aim point at Mars, an insertion burn into a science orbit, and a total Δv budget. Then test the design the way a flight team would — fly the cruise in a model with the other planets switched on — and design the correction manoeuvre the patched conic did not know it needed.

Departure hyperbola and DLAParking-orbit planesB-plane targetingOrbit insertionFull-model validationTrajectory correction

Objective

Pick a launch date inside your 2028 launch period (Unit 9 assignment) and the fixed arrival date. Produce a patched-conic mission design from a 185 km parking orbit to a 1-sol Mars orbit with a 300 km periapsis, and validate the cruise against a multi-body integration.

Acceptance criteria

0/7

Workspace

Deliverables

•A module with heliocentric_leg, departure, arrival and validate, and a script that runs the whole design and prints each check.
•A table of the design: launch date, C₃, DLA, parking orbit (i, Ω), injection Δv, TCM Δv, B·T/B·R, insertion Δv, total.
•Figures: the departure hyperbola, the heliocentric transfer, the B-plane with your aim point and capture radius.
•The discussion of approximations.

Stretch goals

•Repeat the design for the first and last day of your launch period and show how C₃, DLA and the insertion Δv change.
•Replace propulsive insertion with capture into a 4-sol orbit plus aerobraking, and estimate the saving.
•Add an aim-point dispersion: sample a 50 km 1-σ error in B·T and B·R and report the spread of periapsis altitudes.