A concept for the entry, descent, and landing of high-mass payloads at Mars

New trade tree for manned mars missions

“…In a recent paper, 8 options have been examined for the aerocapture and EDL phases of the huge cargo vehicles described in the last NASA reference mission [15]. The use of one or two inflatable atmospheric decelerators has been proposed at hypersonic or supersonic regimes (IAD) [16]. These 8 options can be grouped into three categories: propulsion only, rigid aeroshell, IAD.…”

Finite-time super-twisting sliding mode control for Mars entry trajectory tracking

“…Complex atmosphere environment requires the control system to be robust enough against parameter perturbations and external disturbances. The most efficient way to improve the landing precision at the parachute deployment point is to steer the vehicle trajectory during the entry phase [2,5,7]. To this end, how to design a robust controller to precisely track the entry trajectory under complex atmosphere environment is the core of Mars mission navigation [7,8].…”

“…Due to the harsh and complex Mars surface environment (such as rocks, craters, dust and terrain patterns), the pin-point Mars landing is a significant demand for future Mars missions, such as manned Mars landing and Mars sample return [1][2][3][4]. Mars exploration missions mainly consists of three phases including entry, descent and landing (EDL) [1,5,6]. Entry is the mission phase from atmospheric interface to parachute deployment and it is also the phase which takes the longest time among EDL.…”

Neural network-based sliding mode variable structure control for Mars entry

“…Viking-like landers use inertial measurement unit-based dead reckoning navigation and unguided ballistic trajectory entry without aerodynamic lift control, which lead to larger landing error ellipses on the order of several 100 km and cannot meet the requirements of future Mars landing and sample return missions. Hence, the new entry navigation, guidance, and control technologies need to be developed for the next generation Mars landers [ 3–7 ].…”