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A Dual-Use Ballute For Entry And Descent During Planetary MissionsAn inflatable ballute system for aerocapture at the atmosphere-bearing planets and at Titan may provide significant performance benefits, compared to conventional propulsive capture and aerocapture technologies. Ballute simulations to date release the ballute at the appropriate instant and then ignore it to focus on the trajectory of the orbiter. The latest concept, which we pursue in this paper, is to employ the ballute to soft-land a small payload. Thus the same ballute can provide two uses (1) aerocapture of the orbiter and (2) soft-landing of the lander package, hence the term dual-use ballute. The dual-use ballute concept has the potential to dramatically alter the way we approach exploration of the atmosphere-bearing bodies in the Solar System. Cases investigated here include aerocapture and soft-landing at Mars, Titan and Neptune.
Document ID
20050207524
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Medlock, Kristin L.
(Purdue Univ. West Lafayette, IN, United States)
Longuski, James M.
(Purdue Univ. West Lafayette, IN, United States)
Lyons, Daniel T.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
September 7, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2005
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Meeting Information
Meeting: 3rd International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW-3)
Location: Attica
Country: Greece
Start Date: June 27, 2005
End Date: July 1, 2005
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNM05AA22G
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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