Thruster-Specific Force Estimation and Trending of Cassini Hydrazine Thrusters at Saturn

Abstract: The Cassini spacecraft has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and has since been approved for both a first and second extended mission. As hardware reaches and exceeds its documented life expectancy, it becomes vital to closely monitor hardware performance. The performance of the 1-N hydrazine attitude control thrusters is especially important to study, because the spacecraft is currently operating on the back-up thruster branch. Early identification of hardware degradation allows more ti…