Inversion has been selected by NASA to advance aerocapture technology for interplanetary missions. Aerocapture is a simple but powerful idea: use a planet’s atmosphere to slow down instead of fuel. Spacecraft arriving at another planet are traveling at tremendous speeds and traditionally must carry significant propellant to slow down... and enter orbit. Aerocapture instead uses aerodynamic forces during a single controlled pass through the atmosphere to shed velocity and achieve orbital capture. Less fuel means mass savings that can enable greater flexibility in launch vehicle selection, increased science payload, and significantly shorter trip times. Under the contract, Inversion will study how Arc could support the demonstration through mission design, aerodynamics, trajectory analysis, and vehicle definition. This award represents a new frontier for Arc and highlights the growing range of missions enabled by advanced reentry.show more

Full details:

I led the Aerocapture Assessment for @NASA 's Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Survey Mission Study Report ( and we were "startled" with a number of insights related to aerocapture, which rendered several previous aerocapture studies wrong. The study was led by @NASAJPL 's Mark Hofstadter. The best case for aerocapture is for a mission to the Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune, potentially the next flagship class NASA mission. When you test it, "design" the test which is applicable to a mission to the Ice Giants. A typical mission to the ice giants, would take close to 10 years, but aerocapture can enable super fast mission, say 6-8 year transit time. Unlike for chemical propulsion capture around these, aerocapture enables capture at extremely high arrival V∞, which are outside the capabilities of any known chemical propulsive rocket stage. One of the key advancement needed for aerocapture at the ice giants is the computation of "Required Corridor Width." Estimation of the required corridor width involves detailed navigation analyses, detailed vehicle design, and atmosphere models. And we do not have great atmosphere models of the ice giants. Near-in situ data were from the Voyager missions and to some extent from ground based observations. Perhaps JWST will help us in the near future. The work resulted into a software, AEROCAPTURE MISSION ANALYSIS TOOL (AMAT)—is an open source collection of Python subroutines for rapid conceptual design of aerocapture and atmospheric Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) missions in a Jupyter environment. My previous PhD student built it and he maintains it. There are industrial software tools (like POSt2, DSENDS) which offer mission analysis capabilities for aerocapture missions. These offer much higher fidelity, but are also substantially more complex to set up and run. Such fidelity is most often not required at the level conceptual studies. AMAT solve this problem and probably the only tool for rapid conceptual studies of aerocapture mission. Check out AMAT: Sunsequently, NASA Langley colleagues have studied the problem in further details for the Ice Giants mission. Wish @InversionSpace and @NASA great success for aerocapture demo. Should have happened decades ago!

@NASA What would be the target planet at first?

@NASA Nice

@NASA neat!

@NASA How do you deal with hypersonic heating at these high velocities. Wouldn't the ablative layers just burn off very fast at the first atmospheric slowdown ?

@NASA Interesting

@NASA threading a needle there; i like it. wonder what the 'window' of atmos drag coefficient is needed to get that done in one cornering move... and if planets in our system all fit in that window?

@_abriggs @NASA uhh that looks very cool, looking forward to see this in action at some point!

@NASA We 🖤 orbital mechanics

@NASA Aerocapture produces massive cumulative heat loads.

@NASA Okej zwolnimy za pomocą atmosfery ale o ile dłużej będziemy lądować na Marsie?

@NASA

@NASA Y'all act like this is a new idea. We've been using atmospheric friction to burn off excess orbital velocity in KSP for years. The major risk is going too low and overheating.

@NASA @jcfiaschetti NOW I GET IT... change directions or slow down. this is a fantastic visual. prograde burns only, much less fuel required!

@NASA Hope you've watched enough for all mankind to know to double check your atmospheric density data before sending anything too important

@NASA 🪞

@NASA Cool!

@NASA Ok, now I really really want to give Mars a thicker atmosphere. Enjoy the trip, guys.

@NASA Aerocapture is an old idea that has never been tested. It was a part of the 1984 movie, “2010: The Year We Make Contact”. It can be tested with a lunar flyby to return to Earth. Get that right, then adapt for other planets and moons with an atmosphere.