JAQAR tries to help Arabsat 4A getting to GEO via a Lunar swing-by
On March 1st, Arabsat 4A was put in the wrong parking orbit by the Russion Proton-M rocket. Originally planned to go a Geostationary transfer orbit, the Proton rocket left Arabsat in an orbit too low to reach GEO.
With a team of experts, including John Carrico of Applied Defense Solutions and Mike Loucks of Space Exploration Engineering, JAQAR proposed several orbits to rescue this mission.
The first orbit proposed involved a Lunar Swing-by followed by an inclination change at high altitude, reaching GEO on May 4th 2006.
Other alternatives were calculated such as a transfer to GEO via a Weak Stability Boundary (WSB) orbit.
All orbits were optimized using the Lunar Transfer Orbit Calculator (LTOC)
Unfortunately, all these transfers involve more propellant than the space-craft contains on-board.
An alternative orbit to GEO was proposed and optimised using JAQAR's Orbit Transfer Optimiser (OTO).
The resulting orbit is a 24-hour Molniya orbit maximising the coverage above Saudi Arabia.
The next plot shows the ground-track of this orbit (in yellow), with the satellite (indicated as 'Molniya1' at its apogee position).
Finally, some orbits were calculated to escape from the Earth, or crash the satellite into the Moon. It would be possible to send the space-craft to the Moon and have it crash into the North pole.
ESA's Lunar satellite SMART-1 could examine the impact and search for ice.