The conceptual design of auto-rotary mono-wing decelerators (ARMWIND) based on the functionality of maple seeds as an alternative entry-decent-landing system for explorations on Mars

Abstract

Within the next years several missions will take place to land scientific payloads on Mars. Most of the upcoming missions will deploy rovers, but also other scientific payloads are to be delivered to the surface. In this regard, one essential technology to master is the Entry-Decent-Landing (EDL). The disadvantages of the existing EDL systems and the Martian environmental barriers might be avoided by the implementation of an auto-rotative descent and landing system. The intended design of auto-rotary EDL system presented in this paper (ARMWIND) is based on the geometry and dynamics of a maple seed. The advantage that this design has is that not only uses the auto rotation EDL system as a decelerator and a gliding tool for increasing the maneuverability during landing but also it takes advantage of the rotation to store energy by converting the kinetic energy of the rotation into potential energy in batteries or springs. This potential energy can later be used to generate the required extra rotational energy for the rotor to produce enough lift for decelerating the payload with near-zero impact velocity or any other possible utilization after landing.