Optimal orbits for Mars atmosphere remote sensing

Most of the spacecrafts currently around Mars (or planned to reach Mars in the near future) use Sun-synchronous or near-polar orbits. Such orbits offer a very poor sampling of the diurnal cycle. Yet, sampling the diurnal cycle is of key importance to study Mars meteorology and climate. A comprehensive remote sensing data set should have been obtained by the end of the MRO mission, launched in 2005. For later windows, time-varying phenomena should be given the highest priority for remote sensing investigations. We present possible orbits for such missions which provide a rich spatial and temporal sampling with a relatively short repeat cycle (50 sols). After computation and determination of these orbits, said “optimal orbits”, we illustrate our results by tables of sampling and comparison with other orbits.