Design of a Rocket-Powered Descent Jetpack Equipped with Parachute

Abstract

This project focus on designing and simulating a scaled down of rover spacecraft mission used for descending operations with a rocket-powered jetpack after entering the atmosphere of Mars. The aim is to investigate the different phases of mars descending operations, to use the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code to verify the theoretical results obtained and to investigate the aerodynamic properties of the components (nozzle and parachute). The liquid propellant pump fed Hydrazine with Nitric Acid Oxidizer was found to be the optimum fuel for this design project. A steady state with K-epsilon turbulence model were simulated to solve the Navier-Stokes Equation. The observed results illustrate that the theoretical calculations match with the CFD results by an approximate of 2.9% error in drag coefficient of the parachute and 6.4% error in the thrust comparison of the nozzle.

Keywords Aerodynamics, CFD, Jetpack, Mars, Spacecraft