Development of a Model Rocket Trajectory Simulation Tool with Python

Abstract

Within any space mission, the design of the trajectory that the spacecraft will travel across is one of the essential and most important steps. For the launch of smaller rockets, this is also a key analysis to be done during the development of the project, ensuring that the rocket achieves its flight objectives and enabling the definition of a safety radius based on its landing site. Therefore, the present work proposes the development of a tool to simulate the trajectory of small rockets that is satisfactory for use in academic projects, acting as a free alternative to similar software available on the market. For this task, the Python programming language is used, due to its open-source characteristic and shorter execution times compared to similar languages during the execution of numerical computation methods, which are necessary for modeling the rocket's flight dynamics. The results found with the use of the tool for simulating the trajectory of a model rocket are sufficient for the purpose of this work, reaching similar findings to those of simulations carried out in OpenRocket (a JAVA rocket trajectory simulation software, widely used in academic space). Moreover, a Monte Carlo simulation is performed, in which an impact point dispersion radius is estimated.