Vehicle Design & Performance Simulation Capabilities Development for Magnetohydrodynamic Aerocapture

This work will solve the inability to study and assess the impacts MHD technology has on the whole vehicle design by building a multi-disciplinary analysis software architecture. Spacecraft designers (and mission planners) could potentially use heritage and deployable entry vehicle shapes equipped with this MHD System to meet increased L/D ratios (generally only achievable via larger heavier mid-L/D shapes) for aerocapture at Neptune and other destinations with atmospheres. This new capability would allow mission planners and mission architects the opportunity to explore multiple spacecraft designs across more interplanetary trajectories and entry conditions for selecting the most cost-effective solution for meeting a growing set of requirements and performance criteria. A potential obstacle for this project is if the current aerothermal analysis for an MHD equipped vehicle is insufficient for sizing the TPS material. Should this occur, the exclusion of aerothermal analysis would be limited to simplified Sutton Graves analyses that can approximate the aerothermal environment and give notional comparisons on TPS material needs. However, the construction of the multi-disciplinary design and analysis framework will still provide valuable results in the form of MHD system sizing, and vehicle configuration. Additionally, the inclusion of aerothermal analysis, such as LAURA, could be included in future work.

We anticipate having a new capability to perform spacecraft trades across a variety of EDL technologies for Neptune and other destinations with atmospheres that currently pose huge challenges for current aerocapture and EDL capabilities. We anticipate demonstrating the benefits and opportunities for MHD aerocapture for justifying pursuit of a flight test demonstration for a scaled and representative Earth entry. Taking advantage of and leverage past investments in MHD aerocapture will be difficult without this new capability.

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