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Europe has embarked on a new programme of space exploration involving the development of rover, lander and probe missions to visit planets, moons and near Earth objects (NEOs) throughout the Solar System. Rovers and landers will require testing under simulated planetary, and NEO conditions to ensure their ability to land on and traverse the alien surfaces. ESA has begun work on a building project that will provide an enclosed and controlled environment for testing rover and lander functions such as landing, mobility, navigation and soil sampling. The facility will first support the European ExoMars mission due for launch in 2013. This mission will deliver a robotic rover to the Martian surface. This paper, the first of several on the project, gives an overview of its design configuration and construction phasing. Future papers will cover its applications and operations.

In the future, it will be possible to manufacture very small, robust machines, which may be attached to the surface of a wing allowing the classic boundary condition of “no-slip” to be altered at will. It is also possible that the heat transfer through the wing surface can be controlled. This paper reports an investigation into the possible benefits to aerodynamics that will occur if such machines become available. It is found that imposing an isothermal wing surface can increase the lift drag ratio of wing at transonic cruise and allowing slip at the surface can have the same effect. Both these effects are additive. It is found that control of heat transfer on a wing at hypersonic wing can act as a control device, comparable to that due a moderate flap deflection.

Much of the basic understanding of aerodynamics is a result of research conducted in the early part of the twentieth century. A prominent example is the understanding of the cause of the drag due to lift, or induced drag. In this explanation the drag due to lift is connected with the trailing vortices that can be seen behind a wing. In this paper an explanation is derived for the existence of all wing drag, including drag due to lift. The drag formulation arises from the relationship of surface pressure to entropy generated predominantly by vorticity in the flow field. This new formulation allows the total drag to be split into the contributions made by different flow features. It also leads to suggestions on how to reduce drag

One of the major constraints in developing practical adaptive wings is that they must be easy to install and maintain and be relatively inexpensive. This constraint implies that some recent proposals for wing “morphing”, such as those that require large geometric movements, will not be installed in a production air vehicle. The approach reported in this paper is to investigate ways of improving aerodynamic performance that do not require large geometric movements. The geometry changes used in the current research are leading and trailing edge “waves’ that have a deflection of 1%–2% of chord.

Almost all aerospace vehicles that depend on aerodynamic lift use changes in geometry for control. Examples include ailerons, elevators and flap deflections. As a theoretical concept these controls represent changes in one of the necessary boundary conditions for the solution of the Navier Stokes equations, which model the airflow. The complete boundary conditions require that the velocities and the temperature on the body surface be defined. In principle, the airflow can be changed by altering the temperature on the body surface. The effectiveness of controlling a vehicle by altering the surface temperature, which is equivalent to an extraction of energy from the airflow, is the topic of this research.

A formulation for the induced drag of a wing in subsonic or transonic flow is derived from entropy considerations. This approach shows how wave drag and induced drag are related. The new formulation is cast in a form similar to that used in the classic induced drag derivation thus allowing a theoretical comparison of the two approaches. If there are no shock waves in the flow the two formulations agree theoretically only in the case of an elliptic wing loading, although calculations indicate that the quantitative difference may be relatively small. If shock waves are present they can increase or decrease the induced drag leading to the idea of a reduction in the sum of induced and wave drag by a judicious tailoring of the flow over the wing.

Aerodynamics is a non-linear, dynamic, system and thus has the capacity to produce different flows for the same boundary conditions. Generally both experiments and computational studies will give only one of these flows. The research presented in this paper is directed at developing a non-linear, dynamic, system that models aerodynamics satisfactorily but allows control of various aerodynamic elements so that the nature of possible, not necessarily probable, bifurcations and other forms of non-linear behavior can be studied. It is expected that such behavior may occur in the type of extreme aerodynamic conditions that are precursors to aircraft accidents.

Dynamic stall has been the subject of much research but there is still some uncertainty about several aspects. Almost all research to date has involved experiments or computational fluid dynamics, both, in essence, trying to duplicate the phenomena. The present research takes a different tack by trying to develop a phenomenological model that will allow greater insight into the relationship between various physical elements that are present in the flow. The research indicates a fairly simple explanation for dynamic stall and identifies the controlling factors.

There is a need to begin generating data on the testing and performance of high pressure inflatable structures in the space environment. This data is necessary to validate inflatable structures for future space exploration mission studies. The International Space Station can serve as a long term testbed for inflatable structures where multiple samples can be flown and evaluated over a period of several years. Precursor experiments can fly also on Space Shuttle missions to provide preliminary data quickly and economically. This paper describes new, small payload carriers that are being developed commercially for the Space Shuttle. It outlines a range of inflatable structure experiment topics that are suitable for both precursor and long term study.

One of the most spectacular aircraft exhibits in the Hiller Aviation Museum is the Boeing Condor. The Condor was developed under funding from Boeing and the Department of Defense in the 1980s to evaluate technologies for high altitude, long endurance flight. Although the airplane only made eight test flights, the Condor set two world records. This paper describes most of the publicly available details of the aircraft and its test program.

Prior to the delivery of a Habitation Module to the Space Station scheduled for 2002, there will be a period of approximately four years during which crews will have no private facilities for sleeping or off-duty activities. This lack of personal accommodation can be remedied by providing temporary or transitional private crew quarters as an interim measure until a permanent solution is available. The paper presents an overview of four possible approaches to the provision of these, discussing their characteristics and comparing their advantages or disadvantages.

The new manned space exploration initiative announced by the United States in 1989 will involve the design and development of advanced manned spacecraft to transport crews from Earth orbit to the orbits of the Moon and Mars and back on a regular basis. Though the Moon is only a few days distant, a typical round trip to Mars will take about 500 days during which time crews will be confined to a spacecraft environment for two periods of about 235 days each. Under these exceptional circumstances, the crews must be provided with spacecraft habitability standards and accommodation facilities which are as comfortable, efficient and spacious as possible. However, the substantial mission propellant needs will dictate that crew facilities are minimized to help to limit overall spacecraft mass and complexity. This will conflict with the need to provide improved habitability and accommodation for such a long mission.

Enhanced turbulence in an upwash fountain and fluid/acoustic resonance of an impinging axisymmetric jet are investigated by numerical simulations of the mean flow and the largest scales of the unsteady fluid motion. In the planar upwash, the simulated shear stress and spreading rate are three times greater than in a normal jet and are in good agreement with experimental data. Reynolds-stress transport mechanisms which lead to the enhanced turbulence are discussed, and a qualitative description of the large scale turbulent motions is proposed. A model for the pressure-strain term is determined to be a major source of error in Reynolds-stress transport modeling of the upwash. In an axisymmetric impinging jet at Mj = 0.9, resonant-like behavior with elevated levels of pressure fluctuations and dominance of a single frequency of vortex generation are observed. Vortex stretching is observed to be critical to the generation of noise in the impingement zone.