RECONSTRUCTING THE ENTRY, DESCENT, AND LANDING (EDL) OF THE PHOENIX MARS LANDER

摘要

The Phoenix lander was the first Mars Scout mission and landed successfully on the northern plains of Mars in search of water on May 25, 2008. The mission was the resurrection of the mothballed Mars Surveyor 2001 lander. The landing was performed autonomously, undergoing 5 deployments from its cruise configuration to touchdown, and was observed by three orbiting spacecraft (Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Express). In addition to obtaining 'real-time' telemetry through most of the entry, Phoenix recorded 200 Hz IMU data (accel, gyro), allowing an unprecedented look at the series of events from atmospheric interface to touchdown. A discussion of the reconstructed performance in the three key areas (hypersonic flight, parachute descent, and powered, pulsed-mode descent) is presented here. Comparisons are made to the final pre-entry trajectory prediction and notable differences are discussed. Finally, a presentation of the reconstructed trajectory is made utilizing the 200 Hz acceleration and attitude data, which is also visualized using Satellite Toolkit (STK).