(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-01)
Mahzari, Milad; Braun, Robert D.; White, Todd R.; Bose, Deepak
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) entry vehicle successfully landed on the Martian
surface on August 5, 2012. A phenolic impregnated carbon ablator heatshield was used to
protect the spacecraft against the severe aeroheating environments of atmospheric entry.
This heatshield was instrumented with a comprehensive set of pressure and temperature
sensors. The objective of this paper is to present the thermal flight data returned and provide a preliminary post-flight analysis of MSL's aerothermal environment and heatshield thermal response. The flight temperature data are compared with the thermal response predictions by the same analytical models used in heatshield design. In addition to this
direct comparison, a preliminary inverse analysis is performed where the time-dependent
surface heating is estimated from flight-measured subsurface temperature data.