What is it about?
Capsules entering to Mars collide with the planet atmosphere at a very high speed. This makes the vehicle experience extreme conditions in terms of heating and loads. Until now it was thought that the flow around the spacecraft achieved a stable configuration, except in a very thin layer closed to the vehicle surface: the boundary layer. However, in this work new evidence is provided that a new type of instability might be developing around the capsule: a bow shock instability.
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Why is it important?
This new instability completely changes the flow configuration around the vehicle. It drastically increases heating on the heatshield due to laminar–turbulent transition. This would modify the design requirements for future missions to Mars, specially for bigger capsule enabling Mars colonization.
Perspectives
This work opens a new line of research in the fluids community. It is an exciting project that stills requires a lot of work to better understand and verify the origins of the proposed instability. I would like to acknowledge NASA for the funding, and Caltech and MIT for their computing resources. I hope you find this article interesting, and I am open to comments or suggestions you might have!
Adrian Anton
California Institute of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bow Shockwave Instabilities of the Mars Science Laboratory Using Wall-Modeled Large Eddy Simulation, January 2025, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2025-2259.
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