Entry Configurations and Performance Comparisons for the Mars Smart Lander

Lockwood, Mary Kae; Sutton, Kenneth; Prabhu, Ramadas K.; Powell, Richard W.; Graves, Claude; Epp, Chirold; Carman, Gilbert

doi:10.2514/6.2002-4407

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission 1,2 , which is scheduled to be launched in 2009, will perform the first precision landing of a large (>3000 kg) scientific payload on the surface of Mars in 2010. While the basic vehicle configuration, a 70-deg sphere-cone forebody with a conic or biconic aftbody, will be similar to those of previous Mars missions such as Viking, Pathfinder or Mars Exploration Rover (MER), the MSL design is both larger and heavier than previous designs (Table 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turbulent Aeroheating Testing of Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Hollis

Collier²

2008

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turbulent Aeroheating Testing of Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Hollis

Collier²

2008

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets

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“…A super-catalytic wall boundary condition fixes the species mass fractions for CO 2 and N 2 at their freestream values of 0.97 and 0.03, respectively. This boundary condition results in conservative heating rate predictions in flight.…”

Section: Laura Cfd Codementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second generation landers, such as the proposed Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), will be designed to land with 10 km or smaller footprints that are of particular scientific interest 1,2 . MSL will achieve 10 km landing accuracy through the use of lift via an offset radial center of gravity (CG).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Afterbody Heating Predictions for a Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Edquist

2005

38th AIAA Thermophysics Conference

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The Mars Science Laboratory mission intends to deliver a large rover to the Martian surface within 10 km of its target site. One candidate entry vehicle aeroshell consists of a 3.75-m diameter, 70-deg sphere-cone forebody and a biconic afterbody similar to that of Viking. This paper presents computational fluid dynamics predictions of laminar afterbody heating rates for this configuration and a 2010 arrival at Mars. Computational solutions at flight conditions used an 8-species Mars gas model in chemical and thermal non-equilibrium. A grid resolution study examined the effects of mesh spacing on afterbody heating rates and resulted in grids used for heating predictions on a reference entry trajectory. Afterbody heating rate reaches its maximum value near 0.6 W/cm 2 on the first windward afterbody cone at the time of peak freestream dynamic pressure. Predicted afterbody heating rates generally are below 3% of the forebody laminar nose cap heating rate throughout the design trajectory. The heating rates integrated over time provide total heat load during entry, which drives thermal protection material thickness.

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“…Transition measurements have been performed for an MSL model in the NASA Langley Research Center 20-inch Mach 6 Air Tunnel and in the Calspan, Univeristy of Buffalo (CUBRC) Large-Energy National Shock (LENS) CO 2 Tunnel [1]. Due to the limited scope, only the Mach 6 Air Tunnel results are analyzed in this paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because of the larger size of the MSL vehicle in comparison with previous missions to Mars, turbulent surface heating will be much more significant. Several computational and experimental investigations of the Mars entry vehicle have been performed during the past few years [2][3][4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transition Analysis for the Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Chang

Choudhari

Hollis

et al. 2009

41st AIAA Thermophysics Conference

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Viscous Laminar-turbulent transition plays an important role in the design of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) entry vehicle. The lift-to-drag ratio required for the precision landing trajectory will be achieved via an angle of attack equal to 16 degrees. At this relatively high angle of attack, the boundary layer flow near the leeward meridian is expected to transition early in the trajectory, resulting in substantially increased heating loads. This paper presents stability calculations and transition correlations for a series of wind tunnel models of the MSL vehicle. Experimentally measured transition onset locations are used to correlate with the N-factor calculations for various wind tunnel conditions. Due to relatively low post-shock Mach numbers near the edge of the boundary layer, the dominant instability waves are found to be of the first mode type. The N-factor values correlating with measured transition onset at selected test points from the Mach 6 conventional facility experiments fall between 3.5 and 4.5 and apparently vary linearly with the wind tunnel unit Reynolds number, indicating strong receptivity effect. The small transition N value is consistent with previous correlations for second-mode dominant transition in the same wind tunnel facility. Stability calculations for stationary and traveling crossflow instability waves in selected configurations indicate that an N value of 4 and 6, respectively, correlates reasonably well with transition onset discerned from one experimentally measured thermographic image.

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Entry Configurations and Performance Comparisons for the Mars Smart Lander

Cited by 20 publications

References 7 publications

Turbulent Aeroheating Testing of Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Turbulent Aeroheating Testing of Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Afterbody Heating Predictions for a Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

Transition Analysis for the Mars Science Laboratory Entry Vehicle

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