Engineering topics
Erickson, Dane
Publications and source records attributed to Erickson, Dane.
Guidance and Navigation Challenges for a Mars Ascent Vehicle
This work presents studies and analysis in support of a Mars Ascent Vehicle as part of a Martian Sample Return campaign. The vehicle design has been ongoing, with rapid development of a 6 Degree of Freedom simulation to capture full vehicle dispersions and integrated performance of vehicle, guidance, navigation and control. The maturation of this simulation is presented to provide an overview of its capabilities added over the past year of effort. The results describe in detail guidance algorithm development to increase the system’s robustness to thrust sensitivities. Navigation performance and sensitivity analysis are included to describe the capabilities of the current design as well as identify primary drivers of insertion performance. Lastly, integrated vehicle 6DOF statistical results are presented to provide insight into the nominal performance of the current vehicle and insight into system-level drivers. Future work is described to outline the continuing maturation and development of the MSR MAV ascent vehicle.
Guidance and Navigation for a Martian Sample Return Ascent Vehicle
Overview: Mission Design and Concept of Operations; Vehicle Concept and System Requirements; Guidance and Navigation Architecture; Simulation Architecture; Guidance Algorithm Development; Navigation System Design; Integrated Vehicle Performance; Continuing Analysis and Trades; Conclusions.
Guidance and Navigation Design for a Martian Sample Return Ascent Vehicle
This paper focuses on the work being performed at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in support of Mars Ascent Vehicles (MAVs). Specifically, the analysis presented is in support of Martian sample return architectures. In or-der to assess vehicle sensitivities, a detailed simulation tool, (MAV Analysis Tool in Simscape) MANTIS, was implemented using the MATLAB/Simulink Sim-scape architecture. High fidelity navigation sensor models and guidance algorithms were included in order to facilitate sensor requirement development and flight algorithm selection. This work focuses on the performance of the integrated system and the coupling of navigation and guidance capabilities. The architecture trades are heavily dependent on the ascent flight profile chosen. This work assesses both open- and closed-loop guidance algorithms to capture their relative performance and the resulting requirements on sensor capability to support preliminary vehicle design. The analysis builds on previous work that focused on navigation performance for initialization and ascent flight of crewed vehicle. The results provide insight into the coupling between sensor requirements and ascent guidance approach. The analysis provides data to support requirements for hard-ware selection and testing. Additional discussion is also included focusing on other system constraints that affect hardware selection and operational constraints.