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Overview of Mars Sample Return – Earth Entry System Woven Roughness Heating Augmentation Test in NASA Langley’s Mach 6 Wind TunnelThe Mars Sample Return Mission (MSR) is a planned NASA flagship mission in which a sample retrieval lander (SRL) with a rover will be flown to Mars to obtain sample tubes on the surface that were dropped by the Mars 2020 rover [1]. After obtaining the sam-ples, the rover will return and ascend back to Martian orbit onboard the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). Upon return to Earth orbit, the samples will perform Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) with the Earth Entry Sys-tem (EES) architecture, and land in Utah.

The EES vehicle will utilize a HEEET-variant as its TPS, which will be the first time a woven TPS will be used on a flagship NASA mission [2]. This TPS offers a unique challenge for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of the aerothermal envi-ronment of the vehicle, as woven roughness heating augmentation has not been extensively investigated experimentally. As a result, in order to validate com-putational models for woven roughness heating aug-mentation, a wind tunnel test campaign at NASA Langley Research Center’s Mach 6 wind tunnel was performed in April of 2023.

This test campaign consisted of over a hundred runs with Reynolds numbers spanning from 1-7 mil-lion 1/ft and with six separate wind tunnel models used. A second campaign with a suite of new models will be conducted in Summer 2023 as well as a cam-paign with a flat plate model, both of which are of great interest to the MSR-EES project.

The data obtained from this test are extremely vital for the MSR mission, as they will validate CFD roughness heating models which will be directly used to design the TPS of the EES portion of MSR and characterize the heating environment that the entry ve-hicle will experience. Further extensions of the MSR-EES test campaign will continue to provide validation data for developing more effective computational tools.
Document ID
20230011923
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Presentation
Authors
Jonathan Cheatwood
(Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia, United States)
Christopher Johnston
(Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia, United States)
Brian Hollis
(Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia, United States)
Date Acquired
August 10, 2023
Subject Category
Launch Vehicles and Launch Operations
Meeting Information
Meeting: International Planetary Probe Workshop 2023
Location: Marseille
Country: FR
Start Date: August 26, 2023
End Date: September 1, 2023
Sponsors: Aix-Marseille University
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 829688.14.02.09.01.03
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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