Manned Mars aerobrake vehicle design issues

Abstract

The paper examines the preliminary definition of the stagnation region aerothermodynamic environment, the effect of convective/radiative effect of trim angle-of-attack mispredictions, packaging issues, and the implications of wake flow for vehicles not having an aft aeroshell. The implications of each of these factors for a Mars aerobrake configuration with a L/D in the range of 0.3-0.5 is evaluated. It is shown that packaging and wake flow requirements have a significant impact on the final design of a low L/D aerobrake. Due to the large proportion of carbonaceous species in the Martian atmosphere, radiative heating is seen to play a more dominant role in the stagnation region aerothermodynamics than for an equivalent earth entry. It is concluded that this radiation amplification is an additional reason to consider a multiple aerobrake system.