Aerocapture Mission Analysis

Abstract

By simulating full lift-up and full lift-down trajectories, the limit initial conditions for which successful aerocapture is possible have been determined. These boundaries form the entry corridor for aerocapture, and have been developed for Earth, Mars, and Venus. Moreover, two different vehicles representative for either manned missions or sample return were studied. The vehicle configurations were varied to study the effect of mass and lift on the size of the entry corridor. From this investigation it was determined that increasing the lift produced by the vehicle is a more effective method of widening the entry corridor than decreasing the mass. Furthermore, it was found that a lift-up-lift-down bang-bang type of trajectory minimises both the total ∆V, the load factor, and the heat load. An optimisation scheme was set up to determine the optimal switch time, which showed that for nearly all initial conditions that fall within the boundaries specified by the developed entry corridors, optimal aerocapture could indeed be achieved with an apoapsis correcting manoeuvre with a ∆V smaller than 0.01 m/s.