Overview of High Speed Flight Demonstration Project

Abstract

A High-Speed Flight Demonstration (HSFD) project is the latest in a series of flight experiments in a joint research program into reusable space transportation systems being conducted by the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL) and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) (NAL and NASDA were merged to form Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency-JAXA on October 1, 2003). The project consists of two phases: Phases I and II. The objective of Phase I is to verify approach and landing systems for the final part of the return phase of a winged re-entry vehicle. The Phase I flight experiment was conducted in Christmas Island in Republic of Kiribati, from October to December 2002. Through three flights, the approach and landing system was evaluated during steep gliding, which is characteristic of return flights of winged reentry vehicles, and autonomous flight technologies essential for future space transportation systems were accumulated. The purpose of the Phase II is to clarify the transonic aerodynamic characteristics of the demonstrator, and data obtained from wind tunnel tests and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are evaluated against the flight test data. A Flight experiment of Phase II was conducted at Esrange test site in Sweden from May to July 2003 in collaboration with Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales of France (CNES) which developed and operated the balloon system. Although the flight experiment was interrupted due to the anomaly of the recovery system, various data at Mach 0.8 were obtained through the flight, and fully autonomous flight control technologies for transonic speed region were demonstrated. The data obtained from the HSFD project are expected to provide essential information for development of future reusable space transportation systems.