Detailed Surface Thermal Design of the Mars 2020 Rover

A new Mars rover, the Mars 2020 rover, designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is scheduled to launch in July 2020. While the Mars 2020 rover is based closely on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, the design evolved to accommodate eight new science instruments and a new Sampling and Caching Subsystem (SCS) to collect samples for possible future return to Earth. Beyond the instruments and SCS, the Mars 2020 rover has several other new payloads, including additional cameras to capture Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL). A small coaxial-rotor helicopter has also been proposed. The detailed thermal design of the Mars 2020 rover is complete. This paper describes the evolution of the thermal design from the preliminary design to the detailed design.