Design and Concept of Mars Microprobe Mission Architecture

The Mars Atmospheric and Ground Probe Instrumentation Experiment (MAGPIE) is a distributed lander mission concept deploying six autonomous microprobes from a dedicated relay orbiter to obtain time-synchronous meteorological, electrical, and visual measurements across a pole-to-pole latitude range on Mars. The mission architecture calculates a 276 day heliocentric transfer prior to Mars Orbit Insertion, followed by sequential probe releases timed to low-altitude orbital passes. After landing, the average probe is designed for a 28 sol operational window, while polar deployments are expected to operate for at least 32 hours under low-insolation conditions. Each 23 kg probe utilizes a 1 m diameter, 70 degree sphere-cone aeroshell, drogue and main parachutes, and an aluminum based honeycomb crush-core landing system designed to absorb more than 90% of terminal kinetic energy from landing. High-fidelity entry-descent-landing (EDL) simulations predict peak decelerations of 12 g and computed terminal velocities of 14 m/s, remaining within structural and thermal limits across representative dispersions. The orbiter is designed with dual-frequency Ultra High Frequency (UHF) and Long Range (LoRa) relay links and an X-band Deep Space Network (DSN) downlink, supported by a redundant Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) architecture with primary reaction wheels, secondary wheels, tertiary wheels, dual star trackers, coarse sun sensors, and a computer-vision star-tracking mode. Mission trajectory and propulsion modeling indicates that a Falcon 9 launch vehicle can deliver the 7.5 t integrated stack onto a C3 of 9.879 km^2/s^2 with a 10% performance margin. A 700-hour landed thermal, power and, communication simulation suggests sustained, net power positive operation at mid-latitudes under moderate dust loading (tau = 0.4), with all critical nodes maintained above survival thresholds.