In article ,
John Stoffel wrote:
...now that we have more and more deep space
probes, and with the DSN network starting to get overloaded, how would
you make it easier to send probes so that they can do more of their
own navigation work?

DSN is not just starting to get overloaded -- it's been overloaded for
some time now, actually.

Out in interplanetary space, more-or-less autonomous navigation using
optical-navigation techniques is not that hard. Deep Space 1 demonstrated
it successfully. (Actually, Apollo demonstrated it successfully, but the
unmanned-spacecraft guys tend to forget that.) Approaching a planet is the
iffy part.

Would it help to put some sort of navigation beacon on the surface of
the target planet/moon? Something that the approaching probe could
use for it's own orbital insertion maneuvers?

In the long run, such things could help, at least for busy destinations,
but you need to invest substantial resources to build a GPS equivalent at,
say, Mars.

It seems that MCO could have used some way of measuring it's distance
from Mars more accurately, not just the measurement of it's vector in
comparision to Earth.

Optical navigation would have helped MCO more, I'd think. Inadequate
distance from Mars was MCO's problem in the end, but it wouldn't show up
very strongly in distance measurements until you were quite close, and you
really want to correct for it earlier than that.

Now that we have a bunch of orbiters, would it be cost effective to
have some sort of small beacon put onto them so that they can help
other approaches?

The data-relay package of the latest Mars orbiter, MRO, apparently has
some navigation capability, possibly useful during approaches.
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