Review and prospect of decelerator technologies for Mars entry

With the continuous progress of the Mars exploration,future Mars missions,such as Mars sample return,manned Mars missions,and Mars base,require the lander with a larger size and heavier mass to land on the surface of the Mars,thus inevitably need more efficient deceleration technologies for Mars atmospheric entry.The history of aerodynamic deceleration for Mars entry is reviewed first based on the past successful Mars landing missions in the paper.Then,the characteristics and challenges of decelerator technologies encountered during Mars entry are analyzed in detail.And the system configuration and state-of-art of the inflatable decelerator,deployable decelerator and supersonic retro-propulsion decelerator are summarized.Finally,a more comprehensive analysis and outlook for these three Mars entry decelerators are conducted.