Backshell Radiative Heating on Human-Scale Mars Entry Vehicles

This work quantifies the backshell radiative heating experienced by payloads on humanscale vehicles entering the Martian atmosphere. Three underlying configurations were studied: a generic sphere, a sphere-cone forebody with a cylindrical payload, and an ellipsled. Computational fluid dynamics simulations of the flow field and radiation were performed using the LAURA and HARA codes, respectively. Results of this work indicated the primary contributor to radiative heating is emission from the CO2 IR band system. Furthermore, the backshell radiation component of heating can persist lower than 2 km/s during entry and descent. For the sphere-cone configuration a peak heat flux of about 3.5 W/cm was observed at the payload juncture during entry. At similar conditions, the ellipsled geometry experienced about 1.25 W/cm on the backshell, but as much as 8 W/cm on the base at very high angle of attack. Overall, this study sheds light on the potential magnitudes of backshell radiative heating that various configurations may experience. These results may serve as a starting point for thermal protection system design or configuration changes necessary to accommodate thermal radiation levels.

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