Rotary Wing Vehicle for Landing on Mars: The ARMADA Experience

The Entry, Descent and Landing System (EDLS) is one of the main system drivers for an interplanetary mission aiming at landing a payload on a planetary surface. The first objective of the EDLS is to land safely a payload with a given mass and geometry onto the planetary's surface. At this aim, the EDLS must decelerate the Descent Module (DM) from interplanetary velocities (~km/s) to typically less than a few tens of m/s and land the payload within close distance from the pre-defined landing site. The main objective of the ARMADA study is to assess the feasibility of using an autorotation system as a component of the EDSL of a spacecraft landing on Mars. ARMADA replaces all deceleration systems for the DM (parachutes, airbags, and retrorockets) except for the heat shield. The study aims at assessing the performance of the ARMADA concept with respect to flight proven, traditional EDL systems. In addition, a relevant part of the project is dedicated on the design and development of a proof-of- concept hardware demonstrator of the proposed autorotation entry vehicle. This paper provides an overall presentation of the various steps in which the project is articulated, including the identification of potential ARMADA concepts and architectures, the development of a performance database of the selected configuration, and the experimental test campaign for the deployable rotor proof-of-concept.