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Propulsive Descent Technologies (PDT): Original Content Project

Metadata Updated: December 6, 2023

<p>Future missions to Mars require landed mass that exceeds the capability of current entry, descent, and landing technology.&nbsp; New technology and techniques are required to increase atmospheric entry and landing capabilities for high mass items. This capability is needed in order to enable future human-precursor and human-scale missions to Mars.</p><p>One possible technology to enable future high mass missions to Mars is the use of retro propulsion during the entry phase.&nbsp; Supersonic retro propulsion involves using thrusters directed in opposition to the oncoming airflow to decelerate the entry vehicle while it is traveling at supersonic speeds.</p><p>The project will seek to partner with a commercial launch provider to obtain flight data.&nbsp; The data acquired by the proposed government-commercial partnership are expected to include the following aerosciences products:</p><ul><li>Vehicle state (position, velocity, attitude, attitude rates, etc.)</li><li>Temperatures, heating rates, and pressures on the vehicle&rsquo;s outer skin</li><li>Imagery provided by NASA and its contractors, in addition to vehicle propulsion system performance data.</li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Available NASA Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools will be exercised at a few select conditions during the SRP burn for each flight data set in order to provide insight into how the models compare against the data.&nbsp; The commercial partner&rsquo;s engines will be properly scaled in the CFD calculations using established scaling parameters with varying degrees of exhaust modeling fidelity.&nbsp; Solutions will be completed on custom grids for each CFD code using geometries provided by the commercial partner.</p><p>Objectives (for each code):</p><ol><li>Establish computational requirements (grid, run time, number of CPUs, etc.) and the effects of turbulence modeling and time-accurate simulations on results</li><li>Examine varying levels of engine exhaust modeling (perfect gas vs. simulated gas vs. multi-specie gas)</li><li>Provide best practices for obtaining grid-converged solutions (flow initialization, time step requirements, grid adaptation, etc.)</li><li>Make blind comparisons of the &ldquo;best&rdquo; solutions with the flight data set(s), including flight imagery provided by NASA</li></ol><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The PDT project will also develop vehicle configurations that support landing of a 2 metric ton (t) article on the Mars surface.&nbsp; Project representatives will develop trajectories and supersonic retro propulsion profiles for the vehicle configurations using the CFD models.&nbsp; The project will investigate interactions between vehicle subsystems, structures and thermal protection, the Mars aero environment, mass and center of gravity, and control techniques.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

References

http://techport.nasa.gov/home
http://techport.nasa.gov/doc/home/TechPort_Advanced_Search.pdf
http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=6561
http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=3456
http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=3447
http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=6584
http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=6560
http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=3448

Dates

Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
Metadata Updated Date December 6, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
Metadata Updated Date December 6, 2023
Publisher Space Technology Mission Directorate
Maintainer
Identifier TECHPORT_13594
Data First Published 2013-10-01
Data Last Modified 2020-01-29
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id c8102858-866f-483b-a6c6-87830b1d5a12
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL http://techport.nasa.gov/view/13594
Program Code 026:000
Related Documents http://techport.nasa.gov/home, http://techport.nasa.gov/doc/home/TechPort_Advanced_Search.pdf, http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=6561, http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=3456, http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=3447, http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=6584, http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=6560, http://techport.nasa.gov/fetchFile?objectId=3448
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash d952db93f57ed744e686c92315b4ddc49d4564d1ba264e0cc1b8bc5151c613df
Source Schema Version 1.1
Temporal 2013-10-01T00:00:00Z/2015-09-01T00:00:00Z

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