Supersonic Parachute Inflation Simulations Relevant To The Mars Sample Retrieval Lander

The Mars Sample Return - Sample Retrieval Lander (MSR-SRL) mission goal was to land a rover on the Martian surface to collect soil samples left by Perseverance with intention of bringing them back to Earth for analysis. SRL design leveraged the heritage architecture, design, and hardware of the Mars 2020 mission as much as possible. However, the SRL mission planned to deploy the supersonic parachute at higher Mach and dynamic pressure. The parachute system used on Mars 2020 was certified for flight during the third ASPIRE (SR03) terrestrial flight test. SR03 deployed its parachute at a higher dynamic pressure than is planned for SRL, but at a significantly lower Mach number. We seek to reduce risk by determining whether SRL peak loads fall below those of SR03, which could help to qualify the parachute system without the need for further flight tests. We perform a fluid-structure interaction simulation of the Mars 2020 supersonic disk-gap-band parachute deployment under Mars 2020 conditions and compare predictions with the recorded flight data. We then simulate the same Mars 2020 vehicle and parachute system at higher Mach and dynamic pressure to predict the increase in peak loads. The predicted peak loads remain within the envelope of those tested by SR03. More
analysis is needed to determine whether the maximum strains also remain below SR03 levels.