Mid-Air Helicopter Delivery at Mars Using a Jetpack
Abstract
Mid-Air Helicopter Delivery (MAHD) is a new Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) architecture to enable in situ mobility for Mars science at lower cost than previous missions. It uses a jetpack to slow down a Mars Science Helicopter (MSH) after separation from the backshell, and reach aerodynamic conditions suitable for helicopter take-off in mid air. For given aeroshell dimensions, only MAHD's lander-free approach leaves enough room in the aeroshell to accommodate the largest rotor option for MSH. This drastically improves flight performance, notably allowing +150\% increased science payload mass. Compared to heritage EDL approaches, the simpler MAHD architecture is also likely to reduce cost, and enables access to more hazardous and higher-elevation terrains on Mars. This paper introduces a design for the MAHD system architecture and operations. We present a mechanical configuration that fits both MSH and the jetpack within the 2.65-m Mars heritage aeroshell, and a jetpack control architecture which fully leverages the available helicopter avionics. We discuss preliminary numerical models of the flow dynamics resulting from the interaction between the jets, the rotors and the side winds. We define a force-torque sensing architecture capable of handling the wind and trimming the rotors to prepare for safe take-off. Finally, we analyze the dynamic environment and closed-loop control simulation results to demonstrate the preliminary feasibility of MAHD.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2203.03704,
title = {Mid-Air Helicopter Delivery at Mars Using a Jetpack},
author = {Jeff Delaune and Jacob Izraelevitz and Samuel Sirlin and David Sternberg and Louis Giersch and L. Phillipe Tosi and Evgeniy Skliyanskiy and Larry Young and Michael Mischna and Shannah Withrow-Maser and Juergen Mueller and Joshua Bowman and Mark S Wallace and Havard F. Grip and Larry Matthies and Wayne Johnson and Matthew Keennon and Benjamin Pipenberg and Harsh Patel and Christopher Lim and Aaron Schutte and Marcel Veismann and Haley Cummings and Sarah Conley and Jonathan Bapst and Theodore Tzanetos and Roland Brockers and Abhinandan Jain and David Bayard and Art Chmielewski and Olivier Toupet and Joel Burdick and Morteza Gharib and J. and Balaram},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.03704},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
Accepted in 2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference