NASA NTRS · 20210018310
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Jay Feldman. 3D Multifunctional Ablative Thermal Protection System Overview. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210018310
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On February 18th, 2021, the Mars 2020 entry vehicle delivered the Perseverance rover to the surface of Mars. The entry vehicle carried a set of instrumentation installed on the heatshield and backshell to measure aerodynamic and aerothermal performance, named the Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2. This set of instrumentation included pressure transducers, thermocouples, heatflux sensors, and a radiometer, as well as a dedicated sensor support electronics system. All MEDLI2 hardware operated as expected during cruise and entry. MEDLI2 sensors gathered accurate pressure measurements in hypersonic through supersonic regimes to reconstruct vehicle attitude and atmospheric profiles. MEDLI2 on the heatshield sensors indicated that surface temperatures, caused by turbulent heating beginning 70 seconds after entry, remained at or below 1430 °C, while heatshield bondline temperatures rose less than 45 °C. Backshell surface TPS temperatures peaked at 630 °C, which was caused primarily by radiative heating measured by several separate sensors. The MEDLI2 temperature and pressure measurements enabled further detailed characterization of the Mars 2020 entry performance, and the flight dataset will provide a wealth of information for the EDL community and future mission designers.
One of the unique features of spacecraft entering the atmosphere of Mars is the possibility of a major dust storm occurring during the entry. Design of the thermal protection system (TPS) for Mars missions have to account for the possibility of dust erosion when estimating the thickness of the TPS. Because weight is always a critical factor in designing entry vehicles, accurate assessment of dust erosion is necessary to avoid over-design of the TPS.This study will present computational results of heatshield erosion due to dust particle impacts on the ExoMars Schiaparelli capsule if it had encountered a dust storm during its October 2016 entry. A one-way coupling approach is used where particle trajectories are computed based on an underlying CFD flow solution. Based on a distribution of particle sizes ranging from 1 to 18 microns in diameter, the Icarus material response solver predicted approximately 1 mm of TPS heatshield erosion due to particle impacts, which was 40% of the value due to material charring.
Toughened Unipiece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-resistant Composite (TUFROC) is a tiled Thermal Protection System (TPS) suitable for reusable entry heating at 2900+ °F and with single use potential up to at least 3600 °F. TUFROC was initially developed for NASA's X-37 project and ultimately resulted in use on the Air Force X-37B as the wing leading edge (WLE) of the vehicle. TUFROC has similar high temperature capability compared with carbon/carbon, but is manufactured at an order of magnitude lower cost & faster schedule.