Research On Aerobraking Of The Planetary Exploration

Aerobraking is becoming an efficient technique for the planetary mission. It uses planetary atmosphere drag to slow the spacecraft and achieve the desired orbit; this technique that allows reduced propellant mass can minimize the cost of the exploration mission and increase the payload capability. During aerobraking, the effect of the spacecraft aerodynamics on aerobraking trajectory and the performance and design requirement of the spacecraft is significant. The research in this paper will focus on these problems.Firstly, this paper describes rarefied gas dynamics method and direct simulation Monte Carlo method (DSMC). The rarefied aerodynamic characteristics of two-dimension horizontal flat plate, double cone and cylinder model are simulated by DSMC technique. The results show that the effect of the rarefaction degree on the feature of the flow and aerodynamic characteristic is significant. The present DSMC is proved to be effective.Secondly, this paper uses DSMC approach to simulate aerodynamic characteristics during the aerobraking process of Apollo and NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experiment results and the existing results in the literature, so the present results in this paper is reliable.At last, this paper develops an aerodynamics-aeroheating-trajectory integrative simulation model, to preliminarily calculate the aerobraking orbit transfer by combining DSMC and Mars Atmosphere model. Current results of spacecraft trajectory show that the aerobraking maneuvers give good performance of attitude control and this model can simulate the orbit transfer in the complete aerobraking mission.