In 2012, during the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) entry vehicle, a 21.5 m Viking-heritage, Disk-Gap-Band, supersonic parachute will be deployed at approximately Mach 2. The baseline algorithm for commanding this parachute deployment is a navigated planet-relative velocity trigger. This paper compares the performance of an alternative range-to-go trigger (sometimes referred to as Smart Chute ), which can significantly reduce the landing footprint size. Numerical Monte Carlo results, predicted by the POST2 MSL POST End-to-End EDL simulation, are corroborated and explained by applying propagation of uncertainty methods to develop an analytic estimate for the standard deviation of Mach number. A negative correlation is shown to exist between the standard deviations of wind velocity and the planet-relative velocity at parachute deploy, which mitigates the Mach number rise in the case of the range trigger.


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    Title :

    On the Use of a Range Trigger for the Mars Science Laboratory Entry Descent and Landing


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    2011 IEEE Aerospace Conference ; 2011 ; Big Sky, MT, United States


    Publication date :

    2011-03-05


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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