Mitigation of Radio Frequency Blackout during Atmospheric Reentry using Surface Catalytic Effect

Abstract

For accurate landing/splashing down in atmospheric reentry phase, it is required to mitigate radio frequency blackout, which is a communication cut-off phenomenon. So far, various mitigation methods have been proposed. In this study, mitigation of radio frequency blackout using surface catalytic effect was investigated by numerical analysis of plasma flow. Plasma flows around ESA ARD were reconstructed using a computational fluid dynamics technique. Computed results between non-catalytic and fully-catalytic wall cases were compared. For the fully-catalytic wall case, it was indicated that number density of electrons in wake of the ESA ARD largely reduces.