Aeroshell Contamination Venting on Long-Duration Planetary Missions

What is it about?

Planetary landers and rovers are encapsulated in aeroshells which can be cold, so outgassed material can be trapped for some time. This creates a persistent internal 'atmosphere' which could affect instrument purging operations. We develop a model to assess how much atmosphere may be retained for how long, and calibrate against observations on previous missions

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