Improved Capturability of Terminal Angles with Modified Suboptimal Mid-course Guidance

Abstract

AbstractSuccessful destruction of reentry targets, which can enter into atmosphere with different reentry angles, needs a near-perfect operation of terminal guidance. However, since such targets usually approach with very high velocities, if suitable terminal angle is not ensured by mid course guidance, the terminal guidance may not operate successfully. Hence, capturability of the terminal angle is an important performance measure of the mid-course guidance. In this paper, two algorithmic improvements are proposed in the framework of model predictive static programming (MPSP) based suboptimal mid-course guidance. In one of these methods, the desired terminal angle is successively varied and in the other method a learning rate coefficient is introduced while updating the lateral acceleration command history. Both of these techniques result in substantial improvement of capturability of the alignment angles.