Interplanetary communication: A review of future missions

Abstract

We review the key features of future interplanetary missions with the goal of identifying trends and requirements for the communication and navigation systems. A set of 13 characteristic mission scenarios is derived from the worldwide publicly available information on 73 currently planned or even initiated science missions. Missions from all major space agencies to a variety of targets such as Moon, Planets, small bodies or Lagrange points, have been considered. The key features of these missions are the basis for deriving the major drivers of the communication and navigation systems which, in turn, can support the planning of future technology-development activities.