Title:
Supersonic Vehicle Configuration Transitions to Enable Supersonic Retropropulsion during Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing

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Author(s)
Blette, David J.
Braun, Robert D.
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Advisor(s)
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Associated Organization(s)
Organizational Unit
Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering
The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics was established in 1931, with a name change in 1962 to the School of Aerospace Engineering
Series
Supplementary to
Abstract
This paper investigates types of supersonic vehicle configuration transition events necessary to initiation supersonic retropropulsion as part of human-class Mars entry, descent, and landing. This research assumes an entry vehicle with a 105 mT entry mass and an ellipsled aeroshell similar to the NASA EDL Design Reference Architecture 5.0. All entry architectures are assumed all-propulsive. Three transition architectures are considered: a pitch-around maneuver, an aeroshell front-exit, and an aeroshell hinged-exit. Propulsive subsystem thrust requirements are defined for the pitch-around maneuver. For transitions involving solid mass ejections, debris flight envelopes are determined and compared to a descent vehicle trajectory under a modified gravity turn. It is shown that far-field recontact risks exist for the proposed architectures involving solid mass ejections and recontact mitigation schemes are required.
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Date Issued
2016-03
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Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Paper
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