Discrete-Event Drag Modulation Aerocapture for Mars and Titan Missions

Abstract

Aerocapture is a spaceflight maneuver that uses the atmosphere of a planet or moon to slow down a spacecraft after a single atmospheric pass and capture it into an elliptical orbit around the celestial body. This paper presents a discrete-event drag modulation method for Mars and Titan aerocapture missions. A single-stage jettison is used as a control strategy to modulate the aerodynamic drag for an aerocapture scenario. Entry corridor analysis is performed under worst-case trajectory dispersions for determining the entry flight-path angle. The jettison timing of the high-drag skirt is the single free guidance parameter that adjusts the spacecraft’s trajectory during an aerocapture maneuver. A computationally simple jettison-switching guidance scheme is developed to determine when to jettison the high-drag skirt, and the result is an analytical function that represents the ballistic-coefficient switching curve. The proposed discrete-event drag-modulation strategy is extensively tested using four entry vehicles and three target orbits for Mars and Titan aerocapture scenarios. Monte Carlo simulations show that the simple switching-curve guidance provides performance metrics (apoapsis targeting errors and postexit impulsive maneuvers) that are essentially equal to the performance of more computationally burdensome guidance methods such as an onboard numerical predictor–corrector scheme.