Survey of European and Major ISC Facilities for Supporting Mars And
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Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Aerospace Engineering Volume 2011, Article ID 937629, 18 pages doi:10.1155/2011/937629 Review Article Survey of European and Major ISC Facilities for Supporting Mars and Sample Return Mission Aerothermodynamics and Tests Required for Thermal Protection System and Dynamic Stability Mathilde Bugel,1 Philippe Reynier,1 and Arthur Smith2 1 Ing´enierie et Syst`emes Avanc´es, 16 avenue Pey Berland, 33600 Pessac, France 2 Fluid Gravity Engineering Ltd., Emsworth PO10 7DX, UK Correspondence should be addressed to Philippe Reynier, [email protected] Received 6 December 2010; Revised 13 April 2011; Accepted 19 May 2011 Academic Editor: C. B. Allen Copyright © 2011 Mathilde Bugel et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In the frame of future sample return missions to Mars, asteroids, and comets, investigated by the European Space Agency, a review of the actual aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics capabilities in Europe for Mars entry of large vehicles and high-speed Earth reentry of sample return capsule has been undertaken. Additionally, capabilities in Canada and Australia for the assessment of dynamic stability, as well as major facilities for hypersonic flows available in ISC, have been included. This paper provides an overview of European current capabilities for aerothermodynamics and testing of thermal protection systems. This assessment has allowed the identification of the needs in new facilities or upgrade of existing ground tests for covering experimentally Mars entries and Earth high-speed reentries as far as aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics, and thermal protection system testing are concerned. 1. Introduction capable of reproducing Mars ascent trajectory conditions, and Mars initial conditions for engine ignition are required. Some of the future missions, investigated by the European High-speed Earth reentries, like those performed by Space Agency in the frame of the Exploration [1] and Science NASA for Genesis [2] and Stardust [3, 4] missions and the Programmes, focus on sample return missions to Mars, as- one performed by NASDA for Hayabusa [5], are character- teroids, and comets. The main challenges of these missions ized by high heat fluxes [6] as shown in Figure 1 for different are the Mars entry of large vehicles, the high-speed Earth entry trajectories (E1 to E4) corresponding to different initial reentry of return capsules, and the dynamic stability of blunt entry conditions in terms of flight path angle and velocity. bodies during entry and descent. Another point concerning entries of space probes is the Several issues are related to Mars entry of large vehicles. ground capabilities for reproducing flow conditions as func- The nominal composition of Mars and Earth atmospheres tion of Reynolds number, as well as the capabilities to simu- retained for the study is listed in Table 1. First, since Mars late flow phenomena such as dissociation and ionisation. atmosphere is mostly composed of carbon dioxide, the Related to nonequilibrium thermochemistry, chemical kinet- facilities have to be capable of operating with this gas and ics is also an issue, particularly for the high-speed Earth reen- of reproducing flight conditions typical of a Martian entry, try. To summarize, of particular relevance are the following in terms of heat flux and pressure. Then, the ground tests processes. have to be able to simulate the turbulence flow conditions occurring during entry, induced by the vehicle, by the pos- (i) Simulation of turbulence in hot compressible gas. sible presence of steps over the heat-shield, and strongly coupled with heat shield ablation. A peculiar point of sample (ii) Simulation of reentry flows in radiation environ- return missions to Mars is the Mars ascent. For covering this ment. aspect of the mission, the utilization of ground test facilities (iii) Thermochemical kinetics. 2 International Journal of Aerospace Engineering (iv) Ablation and ionisation. Table 1: Mars and Earth atmosphere compositions. (vi) Simulation of the influence of dust on flow proper- Species Mars (%) Earth (%) ties. CO2 95.3 0.03 A common point to Mars and Earth entries is the stability N2 2.7 78.1 of the capsule which has to be ensured for hypersonic, super- Ar 1.6 0.93 sonic, and subsonic regimes. For Mars entry, the dynamic O2 0.13 20.9 stability has to be kept until the parachute deployment, for CO 0.07 0.000007 the Earth return capsule; due to the capsule size, the use H2O 0.03 0.1 of a parachute would be a penalty in term of mass budget and perhaps reliability. As a consequence, the experimental 40000 facilities allowing the investigation of stability and more particularly of dynamic stability have been included in this 35000 ) paper. 2 30000 While various studies have previously reviewed the avail- ability and adequacy of ground testing facilities and instru- 25000 mentations for Earth orbital entry simulations, to our 20000 knowledge there was no exhaustive study on the same topic for planetary or sample return missions, with a systematic 15000 review of their adequacy for Mars ascent/descent and Earth 10000 Total heat flux (kW/m high-speed entry. In the past, IABG [7]hasperformeda 5000 review on TPS qualification and thermomechanical testing but this paper essentially focused on mechanical testing and 0 did not cover in details aerodynamic aspects, particularly 0 102030405060708090100 if a superorbital entry is considered. Moreover, the survey Time (s) presented was not complete since major companies had Traj E1 Traj E3 declined to provide information. ONERA [8] dedicated an Traj E2 Traj E4 ff e ort focused on aerothermodynamics which is an excellent Figure 1: Total heat flux versus time for different entry trajectories and complete review, but did not provide precise data on during EVD mission [6]. achievable performance of most of the facilities. Additionally, this paper essentially focused on suborbital entry. Lu and Marren [9] have gathered a collection of papers from some for testing in air atmosphere, and their adaptation to CO is of the major facilities illustrating some of their operational 2 not straightforward. In fact, the usual performance envelope aspects, but that does not allow establishing their readiness is different, and the presence of large fraction of CO for and adequacy for sample return missions. medium range enthalpy has to be considered [11]. As a con- Here, the paper mostly focused on the main experimental sequence, test facilities have to be capable of operating with capabilities in Europe [10]. The main facilities available carbon dioxide and of reproducing flight conditions typical in the ISC (Independent State Community) and Australia of Martian entry and ascent. The main features for investi- (since Australian scientists are involved in ESA research pro- gating experimentally a Martian entry are listed below. grammes), as well as the ballistic ranges in Australia and Canada (since Canada is an ESA associated member state) (i) Capabilities of existing facilities to operate with Mars for the assessment of dynamic stability have been also incor- atmospheric conditions (95% of CO2)andtocover porated. From the inputs gathered in the literature, on the a Mars entry trajectory in terms of heat flux and ff di erent websites, during a dedicated Workshop on Facilities pressure. held at ESTEC on 28 March 2008, those provided by the different experimentalist teams, the main characteristics of (ii) Simulation of fully turbulent flows in high-enthalpy the different ground tests have been obtained. The analysis facilities for Martian entry of large vehicles. of the different aspects retained for the paper with the actual (iii) Capabilities of existing facilities to operate with CO2 capabilities and the potential needs for additional capabilities flows in presence of particles for hydroerosion and for ensuring the success of sample return missions are re- heat-flux assessment. ported hereafter. (iv) Available measurements techniques for Mars atmo- sphere. 2. Mars Entry In the frame of the Mars Premier Programme [12] Mars atmosphere is mostly composed of carbon dioxide and the recent ESA TRP [13] (Technology and Research which has thermodynamic properties different from oxygen Programme) on CO2, testing activities have been carried at and nitrogen. From an experimental point of view, the main ONERA, EADS, IRS, MIPT, DLR [14], and VKI for CO2 challenge for Mars entry is the presence of a CO2 atmosphere. environments. Earlier studies were also conducted at IUSTI, Most of the existing facilities in Europe have been developed CORIA, IPM, DLR (in HEG), and PROMES. The results have International Journal of Aerospace Engineering 3 demonstrated the capabilities of some of the aerothermody- 2.1. Facilities Survey. In Europe, the following facilities are namics facilities to operate with a Martian atmosphere. How- running with CO2. ever, the tests have highlighted some problems. For example, in arc-driven facilities, the use of a gas different from air has (i) HEAT high-enthalpy arc-jet at ALTA (Pisa). a strong impact on the arc chamber and notably on the arc (ii) Reentry chamber for material testing at ARC (Sei- performance which is notably reduced: at least 30% for CO2 bersdorf in Austria). when comparing against air. The carbon dioxide molecules start to be dissociated inside the arc chamber with some