Atmospheric Entry Experiments at IRS

Details Atmospheric Entry Experiments at IRS Atmospheric Entry Experiments at IRS

Jan 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002iaf..confe.493a&link_type=abstract

IAF abstracts, 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, The Second World Space Congress, held 10-19 October, 2002 in Houston, TX, USA.,

Statistics

Computation

Scientific paper

Entering the atmosphere of celestial bodies, spacecrafts encounter gases at velocities of several km/s, thereby being subjected to great heat loads. The thermal protection systems and the environment (plasma) have to be investigated by means of computational and ground facility based simulations. For more than a decade, plasma wind tunnels at IRS have been used for the investigation of TPS materials. Nevertheless, ground tests and computer simulations cannot re- place space flights completely. Particularly, entry mission phases encounter challenging problems, such as hypersonic aerothermodynamics. Concerning the TPS, radiation-cooled materials used for reuseable spacecrafts and ablator tech- nologies are of importance. Besides the mentioned technologies, there is the goal to manage guidance navigation, con- trol, landing technology and inflatable technologies such as ballutes that aim to keep vehicles in the atmosphere without landing. The requirement to save mass and energy for planned interplanetary missions such as Mars Society Balloon Mission, Mars Sample Return Mission, Mars Express or Venus Sample Return mission led to the need for manoeuvres like aerocapture, aero-breaking and hyperbolic entries. All three are characterized by very high kinetic vehicle energies to be dissipated by the manoeuvre. In this field flight data are rare. The importance of these manoeuvres and the need to increase the knowledge of required TPS designs and behavior during such mission phases point out the need of flight experiments. As result of the experience within the plasma diagnostic tool development and the plasma wind tunnel data base, flight experiments like the PYrometric RE-entry EXperiment PYREX were developed, fully qualified and successfully flown. Flight experiments such as the entry spectrometer RESPECT and PYREX on HOPE-X are in the conceptual phase. To increase knowledge in the scope of atmospheric manoeuvres and entries, data bases have to be created combining both 3-D calculations and obtained flight data. Experience in this field and flight data are rare. But there are data bases in the USA, where public access is often difficult. The data mostly deal with reuseable launch vehi- cle technology which is a concern for the understanding of entry missions to earth and for the aim to reduce payload transportation costs in future. For X-38 about 40 international partners have been collaborating to develop, qualify and fly X-38 which is a technology demonstrator for the Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) of the International Space Station (ISS). About 1000 sensors will be operated to obtain a data base which will be combined with a aerothermodynamic data base (European contribution). Additionally, a lot of instrumentation has been contributed. PYREX-KAT38 meas- uring the temperature distribution in the X-38 nose structure was developed by IRS. The data of the PYREX sensor system contribute to several fields of interest i.e. temperature histories at 5 positons in the nose structure, information about rotational degrees of freedom of the vehicle during entry, statements on the behavior of the TPS material and heat flux distribution. The paper presents experiments that are being developed at IRS. Below summaries of such experi- ments are given: PYREX is a pyrometric entry experiment measuring rear side temperatures of ceramic TPS. It has already been flown twice. The first flight was with the German-Japanese capsule EXPRESS, the second with the capsule MIRKA. PY- REX-KAT38 was delivered to NASA. It is a fully qualified temperature measurement system and will be operated aboard the X-38 vehicle. RESPECT is a spectrometer that will be used to gain spectral data in the flow field around a space vehicle. The main goal is to obtain information about the plasma state in the post shock regime of a vehicle by measuring the spectrally resolved radiation. The obtained database will provide radiation of multiple species for a comparison with computer simulations. PHLUX: Based on experiences with PYREX, a sensor for heat flux measurements is being developed at IRS. This experiment is to estimate the dissociation degree during a entry using measured heat fluxes on different catalytic sur- faces. Such information are of importance for the understanding of thermo-chemical relation between plasma and TPS wall. The sensor delivers heat fluxes at wall temperature while most of the existing heat flux measurement systems use heat sink based methodologies meaning that temperatures on these sensors are not the real wall temperatures. Such measurements were planned in the PYREX-KAT38 (X-38) program but had to be set back due to problems with the foreseen catalytic surfaces. Boundary Layer Probe is to determine the boundary layer thickness and pressure. The retractable probe is used to measure the pressure in the flight body boundary layer perpendicular to the material surface. The pressure curve can be used to determine the position and thickness of the shock front. Radiometer: With high enthalpy entries and many interplanetary missions such as missions to Mars or Venus, the radiative portion of the heat flux to a vehicle cannot be neglected. High enthalpy and radiative intensities of some car- bonaceous molecules cause high radiation intensities which is, e.g., the case for the Huygens mission. At IRS, the heat shield material for Huygens was tested and the qualification was carried out. Within this context a radiometer probe for wind tunnel application was developed.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Atmospheric Entry Experiments at IRS does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Atmospheric Entry Experiments at IRS, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Atmospheric Entry Experiments at IRS will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1331808