超小型火星飛行機を用いた火星探査ミッションの検討と設計

抄録

CubeSat has been considered as a new planetary exploration platform in recent years. 1U CubeSat is a cube of 10 cm with a mass of a few kilograms. However, information obtained from orbit using CubeSat is limited due to its size and mass constraint. Landers and rovers are attractive platforms to obtain information under the Martian atmosphere. On the other hand, these platforms are difficult under strict mass and storage constraints for CubeSat. Mars airplane has been studied as a visionary platform to penetrate the Martian atmosphere. Mars airplane can obtain more detail information than satellites and explore wider range than rovers without restrictions of the topography. Here we propose a Mars aerial exploration mission using CubeSat and a micro-size Mars airplane released from CubeSat. This mission is composed of an entry and descent system using inflatable aeroshell and an airplane system. The entry and descent system is 3U in size and the airplane is stored into the entry and descend system as 1U in size. Mars airplane flies in the low Reynolds number condition (Re = 10⁴ to 10⁵) due to thin Martian atmosphere. Because the aerodynamic characteristics of the wings are quite different from the earth, a high-performance and large wing is required. To realize the airplane, we study a wing deployment mechanism to store the airplane in 1U storage constraint. Mechanical folding wing and inflatable wing are compared by mass considering structural strength. Finally, the inflatable type airplane is proposed as a suitable wing.