This report presents integrity monitoring and integration methods for an Inertial Measurement Unit (imu) and a gps receiver. The methods are applied to data from a Maxus sounding rocket used for microgravity research. It is crucial to determine the rocket position during launch to ensure a safe landing location. Today, the navigation relies on imu integration only. Involving a gps receiver enha...

This paper will describe the Marshall Space Flight Center's Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph (SUMI) sounding rocket program, with emphasis on the polarization characteristics of the VUV optics and their spectral, spatial and polarization resolution. SUMI's first flight (7/30/2010) met all of its mission success criteria and this paper will describe the data that was acquired with emphasis on the ...

Under an Air Force Phase II SBIR contract, Microcosm is developing a self-configuring avionics network, scheduled for test on a sounding rocket in late 2003 or early 2004. This system is extendable to spacecraft avionics and housekeeping functions, enabling true plug-and-play capability.

Within research for space vehicles with Reentry capability and hypersonic airplane development in the last decade sounding rocket systems became a major and important test bed. This paper will present an overview of the national development and flight test program SHEFEX (SHARP EDGE FLIGHT EXPERIMENT) of the German Aerospace Center DLR. After 2 successful flight campaigns in 2005 and 2012 DLR i...

The purpose of the Sharp Edge Flight Experiment (SHEFEX) was to investigate the aerodynamic behavior and thermal problems of an unconventional shape for re-entry vehicles comprising multi-facetted surfaces with sharp edges. The main object of this experiment was the correlation of numerical analysis with real flight data with respect to the aerodynamic effects and structural concept for the the...