Advanced Numerical Development (ANDev)

The Advanced Numerical Development project (ANDev) is dedicated to advancing the computational toolsets that support faster, more accurate design and analysis of NASA’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL) missions. The primary objectives of the project are to significantly increase predictive accuracy and reduce overall time to solution for high fidelity EDL simulations. Achieving these improvements enables more effective risk reduction activities, broader design space exploration, and optimization of mission performance for future planetary missions. ANDev’s toolset development spans multiple technical areas essential to EDL analysis. This includes capabilities for assessing and validating aerothermodynamic heating on spacecraft surfaces—covering laminar and turbulent convection, as well as shock layer radiation. Additional tools focus on modeling the thermal and structural response of Thermal Protection System (TPS) materials, simulating vehicle dynamics and stability throughout atmospheric descent, and predicting parachute inflation behavior. Together, these tools form a comprehensive computational environment for exploring the full spacecraft entry environment. Targeted improvements across these toolsets involve several key efforts: enhancing multiphysics coupling to more accurately represent complex entry phenomena; modernizing software to support emerging advanced computing architectures; integrating machine learning approaches to accelerate workflow components; and developing improved numerical algorithms that enhance simulation stability and fidelity. The resulting capabilities will support mission design at variable levels of fidelity, enable reconstruction of EDL environments using flight instrumentation data, and support vehicle optimization within mission specific constraints. Ultimately, ANDev will provide a foundation for future mission design advancements, including integration with multidisciplinary design and optimization frameworks and incorporation of uncertainty quantification across coupled simulation tools to deliver robust, reliable performance metrics.

For many of the Agency’s most ambitious future missions, “test as you fly” is not feasible for entry, descent, and landing (EDL) due to the inherent limitations of ground based experimental facilities. The Advanced Numerical Development (ANDev) project helps bridge this ground to flight knowledge gap by developing cross cutting, high fidelity simulation tools that enhance performance prediction, reduce mission risk, and enable new EDL system capabilities across NASA’s mission portfolio. ANDev activities are directly aligned with the EDL Strategic Framework. The project focuses on reducing key uncertainties in aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, capturing coupled materials response behavior, quantifying risk across mission phases, and enabling system level mass reductions. These improvements support critical Agency objectives, including high mass payload delivery for Human to Mars missions, aerocapture techniques for Ice Giant exploration, and atmospheric probe entries for future outer planet missions. The project’s impact is strengthened through a broad network of creative partnerships with NASA flight projects, other U.S. government agencies, industry collaborators, and academic research institutions. Together, these partnerships form a balanced and productive ecosystem for the EDL discipline—linking fundamental research with mission driven needs and accelerating the transition of new technologies into operational use. By advancing the computational capabilities required for next generation EDL analysis, ANDev ensures that NASA is equipped with the predictive tools necessary to design, assess, and execute the challenging EDL missions of today as well as those envisioned in the coming decades.

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