A Semi-Empirical Model of the Heatshield Separation: Application to Titan

Expanding beyond Earth, missions are deploying landers to Mars and Titan. These missions demand stages where the lander exits a capsule, which often requires the detachment of the heat shield. For NASA's Dragonfly mission to Titan, once the capsule has reached Titan's atmosphere, the heat shield will be jettisoned, allowing the lander to deploy. The deployment process involves several phases, and heat shield separation is just one aspect of the overall process. This effort aims to develop a model suitable for heat shield separation that is based on a first principles model and is expandable to Mars, Titan, and other atmospheres, as well as different sizes and shapes. This paper will present a reduced order model of the heat shield separation that can be used as part of a larger system model for the Dragonfly spacecraft EDL process.