Aerothermal and TPS Analysis of ARRIVAL, an Aerocapture Demonstration at Earth

Aerocapture is an orbital insertion maneuver accomplished with a single-pass through a destination planet's atmosphere, making use of the aerodynamic forces imparted on the vehicle to modulate the spacecraft's apoapsis from a hyperbolic transfer orbit. Even though this maneuver necessitates an entry vehicle aeroshell with a thermal protection system to safeguard the spacecraft from entry heating, there are significant time and fuel mass savings for destinations like Uranus, Neptune, and Venus. Despite these anticipated savings, this technology has not been demonstrated, making mission planners reluctant to incorporate the technology and mission architecture. This paper describes the completed aerothermal environment predictions and thermal protection system design for ARRIVAL, a proposed Earth technology demonstration intended to reduce aerocapture adoption risk in future NASA missions.