Abstract:
High-speed compressible flows are relevant to a variety of different space applications. This talk will highlight ongoing research efforts related to three specific topics encompassing both engineering and planetary science topics: 1) modeling supersonic parachute inflations for Mars spacecraft, 2) investigating the eruption mechanism of the Enceladus plume, and 3) describing an exciting new mission concept, VATMOS-SR, that could return a sample of Venus' atmosphere to Earth in less than a year! The first topic addresses the challenges of modeling a single-point failure system for a multi-billion-dollar spacecraft during the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) phase of a mission, and the second topic focuses on a geophysical flow (the jets erupting from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn), that potentially shares some similarities with terrestrial volcanism. The VATMOS-SR mission concept highlights the potential complexities of sampling atmospheric gases in a rarefied environment while a spacecraft is traveling > 10 km/s.
Bio:
Jason Rabinovitch is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ, USA). Before Stevens, Jason was a Mechanical Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, where he worked in the Entry, Descent, and Landing & Formulation Group for ~6.5 years. He received a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Yale University in 2008, a M.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2009, a M.Sc. in Fluid Mechanics from École Polytechnique (Paris) in 2010, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics from Caltech in 2014. While at JPL, Jason was fortunate to work on a wide range of projects, from delivering flight hardware to the Mars 2020 mission, designing, implementing, and testing a low-density low-speed open jet fan-array wind tunnel for the (successful!) Mars Helicopter, to developing a hybrid rocket propulsion system for small satellites. His current research interests span a wide range of topics related to experimental and computational fluid mechanics applied to EDL, vehicle design, propulsion, and geophysical applications.