Robust, Affordable, Semi-Direct Mars Mission Jean-Marc Salotti To cite this version: Jean-Marc Salotti. Robust, Affordable, Semi-Direct Mars Mission. Acta Astronautica, Elsevier, 2016, 127, pp.235-248. hal-01670415 HAL Id: hal-01670415 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01670415 Submitted on 21 Dec 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Robust, Affordable, Semi-Direct Mars Mission Jean-Marc Salotti Intégration du Matériau au Système laboratory, CNRS, Bordeaux INP, France. Association Planète Mars, France.
[email protected] Abstract A new architecture is proposed for the first manned Mars mission, based on current NASA developments (SLS and Orion), chemical propulsion for interplanetary transit, aerocapture for all vehicles, a split strategy, and a long stay on the surface. Two important choices make this architecture affordable and appropriate for the first mission. The first is splitting the Earth return vehicle into two parts that are launched separately and dock in Mars orbit. This is necessary to make aerocapture feasible and efficient, which considerably reduces mass. The second is reducing the crew to 3 astronauts. This simplifies the mission and reduces the SLS payload mass under the 45-metric ton limit for a direct TMI (trans-Mars injection) burn without LEO assembly.