Abstract
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) entry vehicle successfully landed on the Martian surface on August 5, 2012. A phenolic impregnated carbon ablator heatshield was used to protect the spacecraft against the severe aeroheating environments of atmospheric entry. This heatshield was instrumented with a comprehensive set of pressure and temperature sensors. The objective of this paper is to present the thermal ight data returned and provide a preliminary postight analysis of MSL’s aerothermal environment and heatshield thermal response. The ight temperature data are compared with the thermal response predictions by the same analytical models used in heatshield design. In addition to this direct comparison, a preliminary inverse analysis is performed where the time-dependent surface heating is estimated from ight-measured subsurface temperature data.
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