RLV Guidance and Control System Design for Terminal Area Energy Management Phase

Abstract

Reusable launch vehicle (RLV) is designed as one kind of the second generation launch vehicles, which can launch payloads to outer space frequently and return back to the earth like an aircraft. A reliable guidance and control system for terminal area energy management (TAEM) phase is of paramount importance to ensure a safe return. This paper presents a TAEM guidance and control (TAEM G&C) approach. Within the proposed scheme, off-line trajectory, task management, guidance law, control law, and 6-DOF RLV model are included. The developed TAEM G&C system is able to ensure the RLV safely return to the terminal end point from an arbitrary entry point in a specific range. Numerical simulation is conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the performance of the TAEM G&C system.