Overview of the ASPIRE Project's Supersonic Flight Tests of a Strengthened DGB Parachute

Abstract

The Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiments (ASPIRE) project is aimed at developing and exercising a capability for testing supersonic parachutes at Mars-relevant conditions. The initial flights for ASPIRE were targeted as a risk-reduction activity for NASA's upcoming Mars2020 mission. For this effort, two candidate Disk-Gap-Band (DGB) parachute designs were tested at Mach number and dynamic pressure conditions relevant to Mars2020. The two parachutes under investigation were a build-to-print version of the DGB used by the Mars Science Laboratory and a strengthened version of this parachute that has the same geometry but differs in materials and construction. The first flight test (SR01) of the build-to-print parachute took place on October 4, 2017, followed by the first test of the strengthened parachute during flight SR02 on March 31, 2018. A second test of the strengthened parachute with a higher target load, SR03, took place on September 7, 2018. During the SR02 test, a Terrier-Black Brant sounding rocket delivered a payload containing the packed 21.5-m parachute, the deployment mortar, and the ASPIRE instrumentation suite to a peak altitude of 54.8 km. As the payload descended back towards the Atlantic Ocean the strengthened parachute was mortar-deployed at a Mach number of 1.97 and a dynamic pressure of 670 Pa, and produced a peak load of 55.8 klbf. During the SR03 flight, the strengthened parachute was deployed from an identical test platform at a Mach number of 1.85 and a dynamic pressure of 932 Pa, and produced a peak force of 67.4 klbf. This paper describes ASPIRE's two sounding rocket flight tests of the strengthened parachute: SR02 and SR03. It provides an overview of flight operations, test conditions, the data acquired during testing, the techniques used for post-flight reconstruction, and the reconstructed performance of the test vehicle and parachute system for each flight.