Preliminary study of rescue systems for Mars landing

Salotti, Jean-Marc; Doche, Julien

doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.07.017

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The NASA Human Research Program (HRP) has identified over 30 human health risks associated with missions to Mars [ 66 ], including factors such as space radiation [ 37 ], altered gravity fields, isolation and confinement, the closed environment, and distance to Earth. On a more technical side, the most risky phase of manned missions is entry, descent, and landing (EDL) [ 67 , 68 , 69 ]. Surface knowledge and terrain-based planning are considered critical key factors to ensure mission success [ 70 , 71 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geotechnical and Shear Behavior of Novel Lunar Regolith Simulants TUBS-M, TUBS-T, and TUBS-I

et al. 2022

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The return to the Moon is an important short-term goal of NASA and other international space agencies. To minimize mission risks, technologies, such as rovers or regolith processing systems, must be developed and tested on Earth using lunar regolith simulants that closely resemble the properties of real lunar soil. So far, no singular lunar simulant can cover the multitude of use cases that lunar regolith involves, and most available materials are poorly characterized. To overcome this major gap, a unique modular system for flexible adaptable novel lunar regolith simulants was developed and chemically characterized in earlier works. To supplement this, the present study provides comprehensive investigations regarding geotechnical properties of the three base regolith simulant systems: TUBS-M, TUBS-T, and TUBS-I. To evaluate the engineering and flow properties of these heterogeneous materials under various conditions, shear tests, particle size analyses, scanning electron microscope observations, and density investigations were conducted. It was shown that small grains <25 µm (lunar dust) are highly compressive and cohesive even at low external stress. They are particularly important as a large amount of fine dust is present in lunar regolith and simulants (x50 = 76.7 to 96.0 µm). Further, ring shear and densification tests revealed correlations with damage mechanisms caused by local stress peaks for grains in the mm range. In addition, an explanation for the occurrence of considerable differences in the literature-based data for particle sizes was established by comparing various measurement procedures. The present study shows detailed geotechnical investigations of novel lunar regolith simulants, which can be used for the development of equipment for future lunar exploration missions and in situ resource utilization under realistic conditions. The results also provide evidence about possible correlations and causes of known soil-induced mission risks that so far have mostly been described phenomenologically.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geotechnical and Shear Behavior of Novel Lunar Regolith Simulants TUBS-M, TUBS-T, and TUBS-I

et al. 2022

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“…Mars entry, descent, and landing (EDL) 1,2 is recognized to be challenging and significant, and the Mars entry takes up a vital part. Accurate navigation information of vehicles is considered the prerequisite and foundation for the advanced guidance and control 3,4 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mars entry navigation under biases based on adaptive Huber divided difference filter

Xia

Zhu

Cui

et al. 2022

Adaptive Control & Signal

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Summary To address the problems of unknown disturbances and measurement outliers at Mars entry phase, three integrated navigation schemes are proposed in this study by complying with divided difference filters, that is, integrated navigation schemes based on the Huber first‐order divided difference filter (HDDF1), adaptive Huber first‐order divided difference filter (AHDDF1), and adaptive Huber second‐order divided difference filter (AHDDF2). The novel versions of predictive state estimation error covariance (PSEEC) and measurement noise covariance (MNC) are deduced by adopting the ρ function of the Huber case to modify the cost function of the standard Kalman filter. To be specific, the HDDF1 is derived by embedding the novel PSEEC and MNC in the general first‐order divided difference filter. To more specifically enhance the performance of the filter under significant biases, an adaptive forgetting factor is introduced in the HDDF1. On that basis, the AHDDF1 is derived. Likewise, the AHDDF2 is yielded. The numerical simulations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed navigation schemes.

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“…EDL has been considered to be one of the most dangerous and important phases for Mars exploration and directly determines the success of the entire exploration mission [1,3]. Reynier [4] and Salotti [5] summarized some Mars exploration missions and have revealed that many missions failed in the EDL phase. The primary reason was attributed to the relatively thin Mars atmosphere (approximately 1% of the density of Earth atmosphere), which resulted in the Mars entry vehicle decelerating at much lower altitudes with insufficient time and space to achieve safely landing on Mars [3,6,7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trim Flap System Design for Improving Ballistic-Lifting Entry Performance of the Tianwen-1 Mars Probe

et al. 2022

Aerospace

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The trim flap is an aerodynamic control surface capable of allowing Mars entry vehicles to improve landing performance during the most dangerous entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phase. In present work, a deployable trim flap system was proposed to meet the aerodynamical trim requirement of the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which provided a mass-saving alternative to the conventional use of the center-of-gravity (CG) offset of ballast mass. In order to guide the trim flap design, theoretical and finite element (FE) models were established to predict and evaluate the deployment performance. Then, a full-scale physical prototype was manufactured for deployment experiments to verify the design effectiveness as well as validate the theoretical and FE models. Results predicted by theoretical and FE models were in good agreement with deployment experiments. Furthermore, the effects of three factors on the deployment performance were investigated, including the non-linear behavior of the damping, acceleration environment, and backshell flexibility. The manufactured prototype was installed on the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, saving more than 300 kg when compared to the conventional use of ballast mass CG offset, and assisted Tianwen-1 in achieving a successful landing, making China the first country in the world to utilize the trim flap technology for Mars EDL.

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Preliminary study of rescue systems for Mars landing

Cited by 7 publications

References 15 publications

Geotechnical and Shear Behavior of Novel Lunar Regolith Simulants TUBS-M, TUBS-T, and TUBS-I

Geotechnical and Shear Behavior of Novel Lunar Regolith Simulants TUBS-M, TUBS-T, and TUBS-I

Mars entry navigation under biases based on adaptive Huber divided difference filter

Trim Flap System Design for Improving Ballistic-Lifting Entry Performance of the Tianwen-1 Mars Probe

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