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ESA Document - Emits - ESA

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2.7.7.1.4 Earth return capsule<br />

HMM<br />

Assessment Study<br />

Report: CDF-20(A)<br />

February 2004<br />

page 69 of 422<br />

This mission element will house the whole crew for the entry descent and landing on Earth<br />

return. It has not been designed within this study. A reference mass of 11.2 tonnes has been<br />

taken into account for the analysis. The figure came from a scaling up of an Apollo capsule.<br />

2.7.7.1.5 Additional mission elements<br />

For the mission, more infrastructure is also required:<br />

• Mars Stationary Satellite for data relay with the surface.<br />

• Workbenches for the assembly of the composite in LEO.<br />

2.7.8 Launchers<br />

To be able to run the analyses, it has been decided to use existing launchers for the mission case,<br />

as information can be gathered about them, instead of defining a new “theoretical” launcher<br />

being able to launch hundreds of tonnes to LEO.<br />

2.7.8.1 Energia<br />

The Russian launcher Energia has been selected as the main launcher for the mission. Although<br />

it is no longer in production, it was assumed that the effort to make it operational is smaller than<br />

the one to develop a launcher of such performances or even higher from scratch.<br />

The Energia launcher was designed in the 1970s and made only two flights at the end of the<br />

1980s, one with an external cargo (1987) and a second one with the Russian shuttle, Buran<br />

(1988). It is a two-stage launcher, consisting of central core and booster, with a lateral<br />

configuration for the payload.<br />

No user manual for the launcher is available, but performances have been taken from<br />

international launchers guides. The performances and characteristics assumed are shown in<br />

Table 2-22:<br />

Characteristics Value<br />

Overall mass (tonnes) 2400<br />

Payload mass (tonnes) 80<br />

Success rate (%) 100<br />

Status Out of production<br />

Fairing length (m) 35<br />

Fairing diameter (m) 6<br />

Table 2-22: Energia launcher<br />

The payload is inserted into a low orbit of 200 x 200 km from where it is pushed up to the final<br />

orbit by an RCS stage. This stage is assumed to have attitude control capabilities and will be<br />

used to perform the rendezvous and docking of the payload with the composite to proceed to the<br />

assembly.<br />

2.7.8.2 Other launchers<br />

Smaller launchers may be also used for the assembly. The launchers used and their main<br />

characteristics are shown in Table 2-23:

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