Engine placement for manned descent at Mars considering single engine failures

Previous missions to Mars have landed masses of approximately I metric ton on the surface. Vehicles large enough to support humans on the flight to Mars and land them safely on the surface are closer to 100 metric tons, a two order of magnitude increase. This large mass causes many changes in the EDL of a manned vehicle compared to proven unmanned landers. One critical change is the potential choice of a propulsive descent to replace parachute systems that do not scale to large masses. The placement of these engines on a lander is subject to many concerns such as heat shield packing, cargo handling, and engine out mitigation. Engine out mitigation is of considerable interest because configurations that improve failure mitigation tend to be poorer for the other considerations. This thesis presents the development of a simulation of the descent phase of a manned landing at Mars, an overview of the effects of the various requirements on manned lander engine configuration and the results of a 6 DOF analysis of engine failure scenarios.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• York, Stephen P. (Stephen Patrick)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Miller.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37949

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37949