High-Fidelity Simulations of Human-Scale Mars Lander Descent Trajectories
Jan-Reneé Carlson, Soumyo Dutta, Zachary Ernst, Kevin Jacobson, William T. Jones, Ashley M. Korzun, Rafael Lugo, Gabriel Nastac, Eric J. Nielsen, Aaron Walden, Li Wang, Anthony Williams, Patrick Moran, Hayden V. Dean, Alexandra M. Hickey, Bradford E. Robertson, Justin Luitjens, Marc Nienhaus, Dragos Tatulea, Rajko Yasui-Schoeffel, Boris Diskin, Mohammad Zubair, Dimitri N. Mavris
Abstract
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-3693.vid To achieve human exploration on Mars, new approaches to entry, descent, and landing are necessary in order to support delivery of substantially larger payloads to the surface. In this effort, large-scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of a human-scale Mars lander configuration descending through the Martian atmosphere with the use of retropropulsion are described. The CFD solver is coupled with a trajectory analysis package, which is used to provide the necessary control inputs to maintain the desired flight path. Simulations are performed using thousands of GPUs on the Summit system.