In rocket science, what do ballistic, ballistic-lifting, and lifting configurations mean?

516 views

I was reading [this article](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376042114000517?via%3Dihub#s0030) for my advanced mechanics course and came across these three terms which describe configurations of past Mars atmospheric entry mission. Before I go further in the article, would someone please explain to me what the configurations mean and how they differ from one another? Diagrams would also be appreciated.

In: Physics

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ballistic configurations take a path through the atmosphere, treating it as an obstacle.

Ballistic-lifting configurations have a shape which allows a different path by incorporating lift forces to travel through the atmosphere.

Lifting configurations are like airplanes or cruise missiles which use the atmosphere alone to set their path.

All this is super-hard on Mars, because it’s got too little atmosphere to do lift effectively, but too much atmosphere to ignore (like say the Moon).