Views of mission concepts for Mars aerocapture

The Preparation element of ESA's Basic Activities recently took a step towards turning Mars aerocapture from theory to reality. It funded two teams – one led by ArianeGroup and the other by Vorticity – to design spacecraft that use a feasible, simple aerocapture system. The hope was to become confident enough in aerocapture that we would be happy to consider using it on future science or exploration missions.

Each study explored two mission types: one standalone, and one 'piggybacking' on another Mars mission. For both types, the ArianeGroup team investigated inflatable drag devices with a rigid central shell. The Vorticity team investigated a different inflatable decelerator for the standalone mission, while for the piggyback mission they aimed for a concept based as far as possible on existing technologies – using only rigid drag devices.

"These were two of the first ever system studies to look at this specific aerocapture technique, using many existing technologies, and they went deeper than before," says Andrew Ball, the ESA engineer who oversaw the research. "We will digest the concepts further, discuss with experts on specific topics, and then come up with a more focused mission scenario and set of technology development requirements where needed. We hope that this will lead to a full mission concept study, including detailed launch and delivery scenario and a plan for the mission of the small orbiter after its aerocapture."