Abstract
A technique is presented which may facilitate the employment of atmospheric braking to attain an orbit about a planet as the terminal phase of an interplanetary trajectory. The proposed system comprises a set of small aerodynamic precursor vehicles, scaled to the same M/CoA as the mother craft, which will be launched at various angles in the planetary approach trajectory plane to acquire the atmospheric data needed by the mothercraft. Data will be telemetered from each precursor, which will contain its own small rocket to allow a trajectory change. Results of a preliminary feasibility study show that the precursor-atmospheric braking technique could provide Martian-orbital pay load factors of 4 to 5 compared to a straight retropropulsion system.
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