Video Presentation on Red Dragon Mission to Mars
Abstract: One of Ames’ long standing science interests has been to robotically drill deeply into Mars’ subsurface environment (2 meters, or more) to investigate the habitability of that zone for past or extant life. Large, capable Mars landers would ease the problem of landing and operating deep robotic drills. In 2010, an Ames scientist realized that the crew-carrying version of the SpaceX Dragon capsule would possess all the subsystems necessary to perform a soft landing on Earth, and raised the question of whether it could also soft land on Mars. If it could, it might be a candidate platform for a Discovery or Mars Scout class deep drilling mission, for example.
After approximately 3 years studying the engineering problem we have concluded that a minimally modified Dragon capsule (which we call the “Red Dragon”) could successfully perform an all-propulsive Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL). We present and discuss the analysis that supports this conclusion. At the upper limits of its capability, a Red Dragon could land approximately 2 metric tons of useful payload, or approximately twice the mass that the MSL Skycrane demonstrated with a useful volume 3 or 4 times as great. This combination of features led us to speculate that it might be possible to land enough mass and volume with a Red Dragon to enable a Mars Sample Return mission in which Mars Orbit Rendezvous is avoided, and the return vehicle comes directly back to Earth. This potentially lowers the risk and cost of a sample return mission. We conclude that such an Earth-Direct sample return architecture is feasible if the Earth Return Vehicle is constructed as a small spacecraft. Larry Lemke will present and discuss the analysis that supports this conclusion.
3 responses to “Video Presentation on Red Dragon Mission to Mars”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Interesting stuff. The ballistic entry chart really shows the issue with why Curiosity needed its sky crane method. The dive bomber profile for Red Dragon and future human landings is awesome – I’d love to fly it manually!
Well, one, I noticed that too. That was kind of the big point in the intro, and then as he unveiled his plan, he conveniently (almost unbelievably!) left out the rover, and then added another Falcon [Heavy!] launch at the end!
However, the Falcon Heavy (would it really have to be a Heavy?] launch was for planetary protection purposes. That extra launch for Earth orbit retrieval could also end up being added to a Curiosity-style MSR retrieval. Or, it could be eliminated for both (direct Earth entry and recovery), thus bringing the number of launches down to 3 for the original plan and 2 for Red Dragon.
Also, there would be the undeniable related benefit (if NASA’s grand goal is to land humans on Mars, as the administration, NASA, and the NRC report all state it is, and if all of NASAs Mars activities should be designed to help further that goal), of having flight proven a human capable Mars lander. That’s a biggie that could save Billions and Years on an otherwise separate program.
Finally, if cost were an object (and it is), I don’t buy that a scaled down MSR mission couldn’t just do it ALL in one launch.
He showed in his PPT a contingency capability for the robot arm to just reach down and get its own sample, a la Viking and Pheonix. It was good enough for Viking, it’s good enough for MSR. No, it’s not the perfect MSR, but it’s better than the nothing we’ve had for the last 40 years! If we keep waiting for the perfect mission, we could still be decades away from MSR – heck it’ll guaranteed be at least one decade anyway, at minimum (and that’s only in the unlikely event of if Congress were to jump on this plan and fully fund it).
Finally, a tiny rover might be able to be included on the Red Dragon, such as Pathfinder or a little bigger, to fetch a few interesting rocks that are “just over there” that robot arm can’t quite reach and that would otherwise have to go painfully unexemined. Then, direct Earth entry and there you have it – Red Dragon revolutionary MSR in one inexpensive shot.