1 Launch loads, both mechanical and acoustic, are the prime driver of spacecraft structural design. Passive approaches for acoustic attenuation are limited in their low frequency effectiveness by constraints on total fairing mass and payload volume constraints. Active control offers an attractive approach for low frequency acoustic noise attenuation inside the payload fairing. Smart materials s...

This paper presents a new application of structured H∞ synthesis to tune self-scheduled controllers. Newly available MATLAB-based tools allow to tune fixed-structure linear controllers while satisfying H∞ constraints. Moreover multi-model synthesis capabilities can extend their application to self-scheduled controllers. This technique is successfully applied to the attitude control of a launch ...

Incipient fault diagnosis of chemical processes via artiicial neural networks. 23 investigate the eeect of modeling uncertainties on the performance of the FDA system. of faults in a multi-loop launch vehicle guidance and control system. Fault diagnosis in dynamic systems using analytical and knowledge-based redundancy | a survey and some new results.

Vibroacoustics during space vehicle launch has been blamed for as many as 60% of first day satellite failures. At the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque NM USA, modeling and analysis was performed to determine the feasibility of various control approaches to reduce noise levels of the shroud interior. Candidate active actuation technologies included PMA’s, piezoceramics and volume-vel...

Advand guidance and control (AG&C) technologies are critical for meeting safety, reliability, and cost requirements for the next generation of reusable launch vehicle (RLV), whether it is fully rocket-powered or has airbreathing components. This becomes clear upon examining the number of expendable launch vehicle failures in the recent past where AG&C technologies could have saved a RLV with th...

Flying a rover from low earth orbit to the surface of the moon requires an interstage structure. This interstage structure serves two main purposes: to contain the rocket motors used for trans lunar injection and braking, and to support the lander and rover inside the launch vehicle payload fairing. The interstage is subject to various forces imposed by the launch vehicle, and must be designed ...

In this paper, a closedloop strategy in the vertical plane is derived in order to determine the thrust direction of a launch vehicle in terms of velocitiestobe gained The two velocities-to-be-gained are utilized, here, for a given altitude and zero vertical speed in a specied nal time The formulation is obtained for constant gravity assumption, but it works when the velocitiesto-be-gained are o...

The Orion capsule, the successor of the Space Shuttle as NASA’s flagship human transportation vehicle, is designed to take men back to the Moon and beyond. The first Exploration Mission (EM1) is scheduled for 2018, while its first flight test, EFT-1 (Exploration Flight Test-1), was successfully completed on December 5th, 2014. The main objective of the test was to demonstrate the capability to ...

The contribution of this paper to the space transportation system field is to select promising Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) concepts by using a formal evaluation procedure. The vehicle system is divided into design features. Every design feature can have alternative characteristics. All combinations of design features and characteristics are compared pairwise with each other. The innovation an...

The CICADA (Close-in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) is a new and novel micro air vehicle design based on a monolithic circuit-board/structure. The CICADA is a glider which once dropped from a host vehicle will automatically fly to a preprogrammed recovery waypoint. A key design goal for the guidance and control system was to enable the CICADA to recover from a wide range of initial laun...