IRWINDALE, CA - Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) announced today that it will present its Pluto lander concept at the 2017 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium in Denver, CO. Under a grant from NASA's NIAC program, GAC is developing an integrated "entrycraft" architecture that can decelerate and gently land on the surface of Pluto from a speed of over 30,000 mph using only drag from Pluto's ultra-thin atmosphere and just a few pounds of propellant. Once at the surface, the vehicle can switch to "hopper" mode, taking advantage of the low gravitational acceleration and a modest propellant store to hop around the surface, sometimes tens or hundreds of kilometers at a time, investigating surface features of interest.
"Pluto's surface pressure is just 10 millionths of Earth's, but its atmosphere is extremely spread out, extending about 1000 miles above the surface, said Dr. Benjamin Goldman, principal investigator of the Phase I NIAC effort. "This extended and ultra-low-density atmosphere is ideal for dissipating large amounts of kinetic energy by means of aerodynamic drag, but the key is making the drag area very large while keeping system weight at a minimum."
To effectively make use of Pluto's atmosphere for deceleration, the entrycraft will need to be almost as large as a football field. So far, GAC's design concept passes the preliminary physics tests, but feasibility will be determined as part of the Phase I NIAC effort. The Pluto entrycraft's aerodynamic decelerator design will be supported by GAC's research partner, ILC Dover LP, a world leader in space inflatables. ILC Dover is known for producing NASA's space suits for the Apollo program and the extra-vehicular activity (EVA) suits worn on Space Shuttle missions and on the International Space Station. ILC Dover was also NASA's prime contractor for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) airbag subsystem that helped make the landing a succes
