An aerial vehicle including a collapsible and inflatable vehicle body capable of being filled with a lighter than air gas so as to make the vehicle semi-buoyant or 100% buoyant at a predetermined altitude in an atmosphere above a solar system body. The vehicle body has a shape suitable to provide aerodynamic lift. The vehicle may include a propulsion device coupled to and extending from the vehicle body, where the device provides power to aerodynamically lift the vehicle above the 100% buoyant altitude to a higher altitude where the vehicle can maintain that altitude through the aerodynamic lift and vehicle buoyancy. The vehicle is configured to be deployed/inflated from a collapsed and stowed configuration to a deployed/inflated configuration in an orbit above the atmosphere of the solar system body, and is configured to enter the atmosphere in the inflated configuration and descend without propulsion.
LIFTING ENTRY/ATMOSPHERIC FLIGHT (LEAF) UNIFIED PLATFORM FOR ULTRA-LOW BALLISTIC COEFFICIENT ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY AND MANEUVERABLE ATMOSPHERIC FLIGHT AT SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES
2015-07-30
Patent
Electronic Resource
English
Unified treatment of lifting atmospheric entry
AIAA | 1980
|ADVANCED IN-FLIGHT SENSOR SYSTEMS FOR ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY MANEUVERS
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2004
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