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NASA NTRS2009

Planetary Sample Caching System Design Options

Potential Mars Sample Return missions would aspire to collect small core and regolith samples using a rover with a sample acquisition tool and sample caching system. Samples would need to be stored in individual sealed tubes in a canister that could be transfered to a Mars ascent vehicle and returned to Earth. A sample handling, encapsulation and containerization system (SHEC) has been developed as part of an integrated system for acquiring and storing core samples for application to future potential MSR and other potential sample return missions. Requirements and design options for the SHEC system were studied and a recommended design concept developed. Two families of solutions were explored: 1)transfer of a raw sample from the tool to the SHEC subsystem and 2)transfer of a tube containing the sample to the SHEC subsystem. The recommended design utilizes sample tool bit change out as the mechanism for transferring tubes to and samples in tubes from the tool. The SHEC subsystem design, called the Bit Changeout Caching(BiCC) design, is intended for operations on a MER class rover.

MSR↗

NASA NTRS1988

Summary of aerospace and nuclear engineering activities

The Texas A&M Nuclear and Aerospace engineering departments have worked on five different projects for the NASA/USRA Advanced Design Program during the 1987/88 year. The aerospace department worked on two types of lunar tunnelers that would create habitable space. The first design used a heated cone to melt the lunar regolith, and the second used a conventional drill to bore its way through the crust. Both used a dump truck to get rid of waste heat from the reactor as well as excess regolith from the tunneling operation. The nuclear engineering department worked on three separate projects. The NEPTUNE system is a manned, outer-planetary explorer designed with Jupiter exploration as the baseline mission. The lifetime requirement for both reactor and power-conversion systems was twenty years. The second project undertaken for the power supply was a Mars Sample Return Mission power supply. This was designed to produce 2 kW of electrical power for seven years. The design consisted of a General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) utilizing a Stirling engine as the power conversion unit. A mass optimization was performed to aid in overall design. The last design was a reactor to provide power for propulsion to Mars and power on the surface. The requirements of 300 kW of electrical power output and a mass of less than 10,000 Rg were set. This allowed the reactor and power conversion unit to fit within the Space Shuttle cargo bay.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2018

Technology Development for a Potential Hybrid Mars Ascent Vehicle

With Mars Sample Return mission concepts being considered for launch as early as 2026, technology development to enable this potential campaign is currently underway. One of the critical items in the campaign would be a Mars Ascent Vehicle, which would be responsible for getting the samples from the surface of Mars to orbit around Mars. This would be the first rocket launch from another planet. Therefore, several challenges arise due to the Martian atmosphere and remote location. A technology development program to determine the feasibility of a hybrid rocket for a Mars Ascent Vehicle is entering its fourth year. Highlights and successes of this program will be discussed.

Oglesby, Britt↗

NASA NTRS2019

Technology Development and Infusion by NASA's Entry Systems Modeling Project

This paper describes recent development of modeling and simulation technologies for entry systems and their infusion into NASA's exploration missions. Technology development is organized and prioritized using a system-level perspective, resulting in four broad technical areas of investment: (1) Thermal protection material modeling, (2) Shock layer kinetics and radiation, (3) Computational and experimental aerosciences, and (4) Guidance, navigation, and control. The paper will highlight key contributions from each of these areas, their impacts from a spacecraft and mission design perspective, and discuss planned future investment. Aspects of each technical area are only briefly summarized here. Thermal protection material modeling is geared toward high-fidelity, predictive models capable of optimizing design performance, post-flight reconstruction, and quantifying thermal protection system reliability. New computational tools and experimental techniques have been applied to Orion, MSL/Mars 2020, Mars InSight, and Mars Sample Return missions. Research and development in the area of shock layer kinetics has focused on air and CO2-based atmospheres. In both cases, substantial improvements in model uncertainty have directly impacted the development of mission margin policies, flight instrumentation design and analysis (Orion and Mars 2020), and have even revealed the importance of neglected phenomena like mid-wave infrared radiation of CO2. Aerosciences is a very broad area of interest in entry systems, yet a number of important challenges are being addressed: Coupled fluid-structure simulations of parachute inflation and dynamics affecting Orion, Commercial Crew, and Mars programs; Experimental and computational studies of vehicle dynamics; Multi-phase flow with dust particles to simulate augmentation of aerothermal environments at Mars during dust storms; and studies of roughness-induced heating augmentation relevant to tiled (Orion, Mars 2020) and woven (Mars Sample Return) thermal protection systems. Guidance and control in the context of entry systems has focused on development of methods for multi-axis control (i.e. pitch and yaw, rather than bank angle alone) of spacecraft during entry and descent, with precision landing requirements driven by Mars human exploration goals.

Barnhardt, Michael D.↗

NASA NTRS2005

The 2009 Mars Telecom Orbiter Mission

This paper provides an overview of the Mars Telecom Orbiter (MTO) mission, and is an update to the paper presented at last year’s conference. Launched in 2009, MTO will provide Mars-to-Earth relay services for NASA missions arriving at Mars between 2010 and 2020, enabling far higher science data return and lowering the telecom and operations costs for these missions. MTO carries an optical communications payload, which will demonstrate downlink bit rates from 1 Mbps up to and possibly exceeding 30 Mbps. MTO will also demonstrate the ability to autonomously navigate, and to search for and rendezvous with an orbiting sample, in preparation for NASA’s proposed Mars Sample Return Mission. A to-be-defined science instrument will also be carried.

Boroson, Don↗

NASA NTRS2006

AutoNav Mark3: Engineering the Next Generation of Autonomous Onboard Navigation and Guidance

The success of JPL's AutoNav system at comet Tempel-1 on July 4, 2005, demonstrated the power of autonomous navigation technology for the Deep Impact Mission. This software is being planned for use as the onboard navigation, tracking and rendezvous system for a Mars Sample Return Mission technology demonstration, and several mission proposals are evaluating its use for rendezvous with, and landing on asteroids. Before this however, extensive re-engineering of AutoNav will take place. This paper describes the AutoNav systems-engineering effort in several areas: extending the capabilities, improving operability, utilizing new hardware elements, and demonstrating the new possibilities of AutoNav in simulations.

navigation↗

NASA NTRS1987

Ka-band (32 GHz) benefits to planned missions

The benefits of using 32 GHz downlinks for a set of deep space missions, as well as the implications to radio science and the Deep Space Network (DSN) are documented. The basic comparison is between the use of the current X-band (8.4 GHz) and a 32 GHZ (Ka-band) downlink. There was shown to be approximately an 8 dB (about 600%) link advantage for 32 GHz. This 8 dB advantage would be able to either reduce mission cost or improve mission science return. Included here are studies on how the 8 dB advantage would be used for the Cassini and Mars Sample Return missions. While the work is preliminary, it shows that the 8 dB advantage can be exploited to provide large benefits to future deep space missions. There can be significant mass and/or power savings to the spacecraft, which can translate into cost savings. Alternatively, the increased downlink telecommunications performance can provide a greater science return.

Hansen, D. M.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Planetary protection implementation on future Mars lander missions

A workshop was convened to discuss the subject of planetary protection implementation for Mars lander missions. It was sponsored and organized by the Exobiology Implementation Team of the U.S./Russian Joint Working Group on Space Biomedical and Life Support Systems. The objective of the workshop was to discuss planetary protection issues for the Russian Mars '94 mission, which is currently under development, as well as for additional future Mars lander missions including the planned Mars '96 and U.S. MESUR Pathfinder and Network missions. A series of invited presentations was made to ensure that workshop participants had access to information relevant to the planned discussions. The topics summarized in this report include exobiology science objectives for Mars exploration, current international policy on planetary protection, planetary protection requirements developed for earlier missions, mission plans and designs for future U.S. and Russian Mars landers, biological contamination of spacecraft components, and techniques for spacecraft bioload reduction. In addition, the recent recommendations of the U.S. Space Studies Board (SSB) on this subject were also summarized. Much of the discussion focused on the recommendations of the SSB. The SSB proposed relaxing the planetary protection requirements for those Mars lander missions that do not contain life detection experiments, but maintaining Viking-like requirements for those missions that do contain life detection experiments. The SSB recommendations were found to be acceptable as a guide for future missions, although many questions and concerns about interpretation were raised and are summarized. Significant among the concerns was the need for more quantitative guidelines to prevent misinterpretation by project offices and better access to and use of the Viking data base of bioassays to specify microbial burden targets. Among the questions raised were how will the SSB recommendations be integrated with existing Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) policy and how will they apply to and affect Mars '94, Mars '96, MESUR Pathfinder, and MESUR Network missions? One additional topic briefly considered at the workshop was the identification of some issues related to planetary protection considerations for Mars sample return missions. These issues will form the basis for a follow-on joint U.S./Russian workshop on that subject.

Howell, Robert↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Martian Brines in Ancient Salt Lake Beds – A High Priority Target for Mars Sample Return

Mars hosts over 600 chloride deposits as identified from orbital imagery [1-3], including deposits in settings resembling dry, evaporite lacustrine bedforms on Earth. A Mars sample return mission to one of these salt lake beds has a strong potential to directly sample present-day brines originating from ancient martian surface fluids, allowing direct laboratory investigation into fluids, atmosphere, and either potential biology or prebiological conditions on the martian surface at the Noachian through the Hesperian epochs. These sites are extraordinarily well suited for sample return missions because they are favorable for landing and for drill-based sampling, and preserve samples of parent water bodies, including dissolved atmosphere and potential well-preserved biological remains. Such a mission would provide a foundational set of reference samples for understanding Mars’ physiochemical and pre-/biological history, likely to be investigated in depth for generations to come.

brine↗

NASA NTRS2015

Mars Ascent Vehicle-Propellant Aging

This project is to develop and test a new propellant formulation specifically for the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) for the robotic Mars Sample Return mission. The project was initiated under the Planetary Sciences Division In-Space Propulsion Technology (ISPT) program and is continuing under the Mars Exploration Program. The two-stage, solid motor-based MAV has been the leading MAV solution for more than a decade. Additional studies show promise for alternative technologies including hybrid and bipropellant options, but the solid motor design has significant propellant density advantages well suited for physical constraints imposed while using the SkyCrane descent stage. The solid motor concept has lower specific impulse (Isp) than alternatives, but if the first stage and payload remain sufficiently small, the two-stage solid MAV represents a potential low risk approach to meet the mission needs. As the need date for the MAV slips, opportunities exist to advance technology with high on-ramp potential. The baseline propellant for the MAV is currently the carboxyl terminated polybutadiene (CTPB) based formulation TP-H-3062 due to its advantageous low temperature mechanical properties and flight heritage. However, the flight heritage is limited and outside the environments, the MAV must endure. The ISPT program competed a propellant formulation project with industry and selected ATK to develop a new propellant formulation specifically for the MAV application. Working with ATK, a large number of propellant formulations were assessed to either increase performance of a CTPB propellant or improve the low temperature mechanical properties of a hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) propellant. Both propellants demonstrated potential to increase performance over heritage options, but an HTPB propellant formulation, TP-H-3544, was selected for production and testing. The test plan includes propellant aging first at high vacuum conditions, representative of the Mars transit, followed by an additional year at simulated Mars surface conditions. The actual Mars surface environment is based on the igloo design, actively maintains the propellant at or above -40 degC, 95% carbon dioxide at Mars surface pressure. The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Mars environment test facility is shown in figure 1 and located in the East Test area of Redstone Arsenal due to storage of live propellants. The facility consists of a vacuum chamber placed inside a large freezer unit. The facility includes pressure and temperature monitoring equipment in addition to a vacuum quality monitoring system spectrometer to record any outgassing products.

Dankanich, John↗

NASA NTRS1994

Mars Sample Return: A Low Cost, Direct and Minimum Risk Design

Current NASA strategy for Mars exploration is seeking simpler, cheaper, and more reliable missions to Mars. This requirement has left virtually all previously proposed Mars Sample Return (MSR) missions as economically untenable. The MSR mission proposed in this paper represents an economical, back-to-basics approach of mission design by leveraging interplanetary trajectory design and limited surface science for shorter mission duration, advanced propulsion and thermal protection systems for mass reduction and simplified mission operations for high reliability. As a result, the proposed concept, called the Fast, Mini, Direct Mars Sample Return (FMD-MSR) mission represents the cheapest and fastest class of missions that could return a 0.5 kg sample from the surface of Mars to Earth with a total mission duration of less than 1.5 Earth years. The constraints require an aggressive mission design that dictates the use of advanced storable liquid propulsion systems and advanced TPS materials to minimize aeroshell mass. The mission does not have the high risk operations of other MSR missions such as orbit rendezvous at Mars, propulsive insertion at Mars, rover operations on the surface, and sample transfer. This paper details the key mission elements for such a mission and presents a feasible and cost effective design.

Wercinski, Paul F.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Performance Analysis and Data Processing for the Mars Sample Recovery Helicopter in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 25-ft Space Simulator

On April 19, 2021, Ingenuity became the first helicopter to fly on Mars at Jezero Crater, completing a total of 72 flights by the end of its mission. The success of Ingenuity resulted in various research efforts to further explore Mars via vertical flight, including two optimized Ingenuity-sized helicopters proposed to retrieve samples for the 2028 Mars Sample Return mission. To aid in the design process for the two proposed Sample Retrieval Helicopters, both heritage and optimized, increased diameter rotors were tested at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 25-ft Space Simulator. Three test campaigns were performed using the Ingenuity rotors and optimized Sample Retrieval Helicopter (SRH) rotors for several rotor speeds, densities, configurations, and collectives to identify performance limitations. These three test campaigns included the Ingenuity Engineering Design Model 1 (EDM-1) with and without a cruciform box, Transonic Rotor Test (TRT) rig, and SRH Dual Rotor Test (DRT). Experimental setup, test matrix, data processing, data quality, and performance results for EDM-1, TRT, and DRT campaigns are presented and discussed. Experimental results from the test campaigns will aid in future experimental methods and validation efforts for planetary rotorcraft exploration.

Data Processing↗

NASA NTRS1988

The search for an identification of amino acids, nucleobases and nucleosides in samples returned from Mars

The Mars Sample Return mission will provide us with a unique source of material from our solar system; material which could advance our knowledge of the processes of chemical evolution. As has been pointed out, Mars geological investigations based on the Viking datasets have shown that primordial Mars was in many biologically important ways similar to the primordial Earth; the presence of surface liquid water, moderate surface temperatures, and atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, and high geothermal heat flow. Indeed, it would seem that conditions on Earth and Mars were fundamentally similar during the first one billion years or so. As has been pointed out, Mars may well contain the best preserved record of the events that transpired on the early planets. Examination of that early record will involve searching for many things, from microfossils to isotopic abundance data. We propose an investigation of the returned Mars samples for biologically important organic compounds, with emphases on amino acids, the purine and pyrimidine bases, and nucleosides.

Gehrke, Charles W.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Formation of the layered deposits in the Valles Marineris, Mars

Thick sequences of layered deposits are found in the Valles Marineris, which exhibit fine, nearly horizontal layering, and are present as isolated plateaus of what were once more extensive deposits. It was argued that the morphology of the deposits is most consistent with origin in standing bodies of water. The conditions necessary for the existence of ice-covered Martian paleolakes are examined in detail and mechanisms for sediment deposition in them are considered. It was concluded that there are several geologically feasible mechanisms that could have led to the formation of thick deposits in ice-covered paleolakes in the Valles Marineris. Present data are insufficient to choose conclusively among the various possibilities. Several types of data from the Mars Observer mission will be useful in further characterizing the deposits and clarifying the process of their origin. The deposits should be considered important targets for a future Mars sample return mission.

Nedell, Susan S.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Assessing the Relative Risk of Aerocapture Using Probabalistic Risk Assessment

A recent study performed for the Aerocapture Technology Area in the In-Space Propulsion Technology Projects Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center investigated the relative risk of various capture techniques for Mars missions. Aerocapture has been proposed as a possible capture technique for future Mars missions but has been perceived by many in the community as a higher risk option as compared to aerobraking and propulsive capture. By performing a probabilistic risk assessment on aerocapture, aerobraking and propulsive capture, a comparison was made to uncover the projected relative risks of these three maneuvers. For mission planners, this knowledge will allow them to decide if the mass savings provided by aerocapture warrant any incremental risk exposure. The study focuses on a Mars Sample Return mission currently under investigation at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In each case (propulsive, aerobraking and aerocapture), the Earth return vehicle is inserted into Martian orbit by one of the three techniques being investigated. A baseline spacecraft was established through initial sizing exercises performed by JPL's Team X. While Team X design results provided the baseline and common thread between the spacecraft, in each case the Team X results were supplemented by historical data as needed. Propulsion, thermal protection, guidance, navigation and control, software, solar arrays, navigation and targeting and atmospheric prediction were investigated. A qualitative assessment of human reliability was also included. Results show that different risk drivers contribute significantly to each capture technique. For aerocapture, the significant drivers include propulsion system failures and atmospheric prediction errors. Software and guidance hardware contribute the most to aerobraking risk. Propulsive capture risk is mainly driven by anomalous solar array degradation and propulsion system failures. While each subsystem contributes differently to the risk of each technique, results show that there exists little relative difference in the reliability of these capture techniques although uncertainty for the aerocapture estimates remains high given the lack of in-space demonstration.

Percy, Thomas K.↗

NASA NTRS2018

Low Temperature Hybrid Mars Ascent Vehicle Concept Development and Planning at MSFC

Return of samples from Mars has been a goal of NASA's for decades. The current Mars Sample Return mission concepts have a multiple launch rocket from the earth, where one mission delivers a caching rover to collect and package the Martian soil samples. Another rocket sends the Mars Ascent Vehicle that takes those samples to orbit. Another rocket sends an orbiter, that also meets up with the samples in orbit, and brings them back to earth. Our tasks have been focused on the Mars Ascent Vehicle. To leave the Martian surface, it requires a two burn trajectory, one to get off the planet and another to circularize the orbit. Recent studies have led to the investigation of a hybrid rocket solution. That technology has been under development for several years. This paper will discuss some of the work going on at MSFC to understand how to process the fuel, some test firings done to characterize some design features and some planning done to scope out what it would take to qualify a hybrid rocket motor for this application.

Story, George↗

NASA NTRS2000

Safe Landings in Extreme Terrain

Following the failure of the Mars Polar Lander and the re-evaluation of the Mars Sample Return mission status, a Safe Landing Tiger team was established on January 7, 2000. The charter of the team was to re-evaluate large scale (1000-2000 Kg) Mars lander designs with the principal objective being the assurance of safe landing in hazardous terrain. The tiger team developed a number of concepts, two of the most notable and promising concepts, are both based on a Mobile Lander paradigm. Unlike the Pathfinder and Surveyor class landers, this paradigm groups all of the landed equipment into one of two categories: (1) EDL only equipment (i.e., not used after touchdown) and (2) multi-use equipment, those used during and or after touchdown. The objective is to maximize the use of all equipment being brought to the surface by placing the bulk of the avionics and mechanical systems onto a much larger 'rover' and leaving only the bare essentials on a 'dead-on-arrival' landing system. All of the hardware that the surface roving mission needs is enlisted into performing the EDL tasks. Any EDL specific avionics not used after touchdown are placed on the landing system.

Rivellini, Tom↗

NASA NTRS2001

Rock Driller

The next series of planetary exploration missions require a method of extracting rock and soil core samples. Therefore a prototype ultrasonic core driller (UTCD) was developed to meet the constraints of Small Bodies Exploration and Mars Sample Return Missions. The constraints in the design are size, weight, power, and axial loading. The ultrasonic transducer requires a relatively low axial load, which is one of the reasons this technology was chosen. The ultrasonic generator breadboard section can be contained within the 5x5x3 limits and weighs less than two pounds. Based on results attained the objectives for the first phase were achieved. A number of transducer probes were made and tested. One version only drills, and the other will actually provide a small core from a rock. Because of a more efficient transducer/probe, it will run at very low power (less than 5 Watts) and still drill/core. The prototype generator was built to allow for variation of all the performance-effecting elements of the transducer/probe/end effector, i.e., pulse, duty cycle, frequency, etc. The heart of the circuitry is what will be converted to a surface mounted board for the next phase, after all the parameters have been optimized and the microprocessor feedback can be installed.

Peterson, Thomas M.↗