Proposal and Basic Characteristics Evaluation of Partial Closed Type Parafoil for Martian Exploration Probe

Abstract

One of the technologies to make the future planetary exploration more flexible and valuable is a vehicle which can fly freely in the Martian atmosphere. Our group proposes a parafoil-type vehicle which has an inflatable wing. The parafoil can be packed compactly when a launch and cruising phase and can be deployed to a large aerodynamic device only when necessary, that is, flight in atmosphere. However, a conventional parafoil which is ram air type might be not inflated by lower ram pressure at low density atmosphere environment. To realize the planetary probe, we developed new-type parafoil which can be deployed by small gas injection. In this paper, the structure of partial closed type parafoil is summarized as compared with previous type parafoils. Moreover, aerodynamic characteristics and deployment-ability of partial closed type parafoil was obtained by wind tunnel test and deployment test. As results, this type parafoil can realized the stable flight in the wind tunnel. And the parafoil has high aerodynamic characteristics which maximum L/D is 6.6 and quick deployment-ability which taken less than 1 second.