Summary of the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiments (ASPIRE) Sounding Rocket Tests with a Disk-Gap-Band Parachute

摘要

The Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiments (ASPIRE) project was tasked with developing and utilizing a capability for testing full scale supersonic parachutes in Mars-relevant conditions. The initial focus was to act as a risk reduction activity for the Mars 2020 mission by testing two candidate Disk-Gap-Band (DGB) parachutes. A Terrier-Black Brant IX sounding rocket launched out of Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Virginia was used to deliver the two candidate parachutes to deployment and inflation conditions relevant to the Mars 2020 mission. The two candidate parachutes were a Build-to-Print version of the 21.5 meter diameter DGB parachuted used for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission and a strengthened DGB parachute of the same geometry but with different materials and construction methods. Three tests took place between October 2017 to September 2018. The first flight (SR01) tested the MSL Build-to-Print DGB parachute while the second and third (SR02 and SR03) flights tested the Strengthened DGB parachute. These tests targeted a specific dynamic pressure at parachute deploy in order to reach a desired load on the parachute at full inflation. The parachutes were mortar-fire deployed at dynamic pressures ranging from 452 to 932 Pascals and Mach numbers between 1.77 and 1.97. The parachutes experienced a peak force of 32,56, and 67 klbf for SR01, SR02, and SR03 respectively. All three flights reached their desired test conditions and all parachutes survived the stresses of their supersonic deployment and inflation while showing no significant damage. All data necessary to reconstruct the performance of parachute tests, including high speed footage of inflation, was successfully obtained. This paper will present an overview of all three ASPIRE flights. This includes an explanation of the test architecture, a summary of mission operations, high level results along with brief analysis, and the conclusions from these tests. This paper also references the various technical papers that present more details about individual test results and analysis.