Aerocapture with a Flexible Tether

In previous work, the authors have demonstrated that the aerobraking tether, modeled as a rigid rod, could achieve aerocapture at any atmosphere-bearing planet in the solar system for less mass than the corresponding propellant of a typical retro-rocket system. In this paper, the great promise of the aerobraking tether is further explored by developing the equations of motion for the analysis of flexible tether behavior during the maneuver. A standard Lagrangian approach is taken with the tether modeled as a chain of linked rigid rods. Since an arbitrary number of rods can be used, the flexible behavior can be approximated to an arbitrary degree of accuracy. The results indicate that the aerobraking tether concept remains feasible when flexibility effects are included in the model.