Interface and Thermal Design Overview of the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) Orbiting Sample (OS)

The Mars Sample Return Campaign’s Orbiting Sample (OS) is planned as the primary containment vessel to contain the cached Mars samples from the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover on their return to earth with a thermal goal of maintaining sample temperature integrity. This requirement must be obtained throughout various environments including sample transfer activities, Mars surface diurnal cycles, Mars ascent, orbit, return cruise to Earth, and Earth entry. While the architecture of these phases has varied greatly throughout continuing campaign proposals, the general environments remain the same for the OS. The OS thermal design allows for passive thermal control through interface requirements and standard thermal technologies such as optical coatings. The thermal model has planned uses that include not only design and bounding predictions, but actual predictions of future unknown samples to provide insight for the science team into their temperature history.