An aerocapture maneuver employs a single atmospheric pass to reduce orbital energy and establish a closed orbit. Modulating the spacecraft’s vertical lift component (via bank control) during atmospheric flight in an optimal fashion will minimize the post-exit propulsive burn required to establish a target orbit. This paper presents a new analytical predictor–corrector guidance algorithm for the Earth-aerocapture problem. Bank control is open loop (lift-up) during the descent phase and closed loop (lift-down) during the ascent phase in order to emulate the bang–bang bank structure of optimal aerocapture. The guidance is developed using analytical functions representing the flight-path angle and the composite effects of atmospheric density, lift and drag coefficients, and vehicle mass along the ascent trajectory. These functions result in a closed-form equation for exit velocity and a method for predicting the switching condition from lift-up to lift-down control. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate the robustness, accuracy, and near-optimal performance of this new analytical guidance method.


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    Title :

    Analytical Earth-Aerocapture Guidance with Near-Optimal Performance


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2020-08-27


    Size :

    12 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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