Mars Exploration Rover Parachute System Performance

Witkowski, Allen; Kandis, Mike; Bruno, R.; Cruz, Juan R.

doi:10.2514/6.2005-1605

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Because of the expense of these tests, their like has not been attempted since. Instead, all subsequent Mars EDL systems including those planned in the foreseeable future rely on inflation qualification by similarity to the Viking design and focus on parachute strength qualification through lower-cost subsonic and static testing [17][18][19].…”

Section: B Supersonic Disk-gap-band Parachutementioning

confidence: 99%

Mars Exploration Entry, Descent, and Landing Challenges

Braun

Manning

2007

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets

466

110

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: B Supersonic Disk-gap-band Parachutementioning

confidence: 99%

Mars Exploration Entry, Descent, and Landing Challenges

Braun

Manning

2007

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets

466

110

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The design began with a 22 panel, 96-gore design for a 33.5 m D 0 Ringsail parachute tested as part of the 2005 Subsonic Parachute Technology Task (SPTT). 6,7 The smaller Disksail design reduces the…”

Section: B Supersonic Disksail Parachutementioning

confidence: 99%

Summary of the First High-Altitude, Supersonic Flight Dynamics Test for the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project

Clark

Adler

Manning

2015

23rd AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project is developing and testing the next generation of supersonic aerodynamic decelerators for planetary entry. A key element of that development is the testing of full-scale articles in conditions relevant to their intended use, primarily the tenuous Mars atmosphere. To achieve this testing, the LDSD project developed a test architecture similar to that used by the Viking Project in the early 1970's for the qualification of their supersonic parachute. A large, helium filled scientific balloon is used to hoist a 4.7 m blunt body test vehicle to an altitude of approximately 32 kilometers. The test vehicle is released from the balloon, spun up for gyroscopic stability, and accelerated to over four times the speed of sound and an altitude of 50 kilometers using a large solid rocket motor. Once at those conditions, the vehicle is despun and the test period begins.The first flight of this architecture occurred on June 28th of 2014. Though primarily a shake out flight of the new test system, the flight was also able to achieve an early test of two of the LDSD technologies, a large 6 m diameter Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD) and a large, 30.5 m nominal diameter supersonic parachute. This paper summarizes this first flight.

show abstract

“…Opening loads for MER-A and MER-B are likely underestimated due to the low sampling frequency (8 Hz) of the telemetered flight data [17]. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A momentum-based indicator for predicting the peak opening load of supersonic parachutes

Way

2018

2018 IEEE Aerospace Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, a new empirical indicator for predicting the peak opening loads of supersonic parachutes is presented. The proposed indicator is proportional to twice the free-stream dynamic pressure and the projected area of the parachute, which is equivalent to estimating the opening load as a percentage of the free-stream momentum flux through the projected area at the moment of peak inflation. The form of this expression is motivated by a classical control volume analysis of the aerodynamic forces acting on a parachute during inflation, under the simplifying assumptions of quasi-static and one-dimensional flow. For parachute geometries and flight conditions typical of Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing systems, the largest contribution to the total drag is shown to be a momentum flux term that is associated with the entrainment of atmosphere within the inflating parachute volume. Using this new method, empirical constants are calculated from existing flight reconstruction data and are shown to have a smaller standard deviation than similar constants determined using the customary indicator form, which is based on the steady-state subsonic drag and proportional to the parachute reference area. These empirical constants are also compared to an analytic estimate, derived from the control volume analysis, and shown to have excellent agreement across a wide range of Mach numbers and dynamic pressures for several parachute geometries. While opening loads estimated using both methods produce similar results at low supersonic Mach numbers typical of past inflations, the proposed method predicts notably larger loads at higher Mach numbers, those above Mach 2.0, due to the omission of any Mach Efficiency Factor. Several current Mars EDL projects have adopted this new indicator.

show abstract

Mars Exploration Rover Parachute System Performance

Cited by 8 publications

References 1 publication

Mars Exploration Entry, Descent, and Landing Challenges

Mars Exploration Entry, Descent, and Landing Challenges

Summary of the First High-Altitude, Supersonic Flight Dynamics Test for the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project

A momentum-based indicator for predicting the peak opening load of supersonic parachutes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About