Survey of flight and numerical data of hypersonic rarefied flows encountered in earth orbit and atmospheric reentry

Abstract

The control of the satellites end-of-life including deorbiting and atmospheric entry as well as the investigation of orbital maneuvers for new space missions confer a growing importance to the study of the hypersonic rarefied regime. While flight data are necessary for the validation of Direct Simulation Monte-Carlo numerical simulations, only a few studies and data are available for this purpose. Therefore, this article aims at gathering ground wind-tunnel and flight data in rarefied regime as well as their numerical reconstruction from a wide scope of space programs. A detailed analysis of these data will be presented. After a review of hypersonic low-density wind-tunnel experiments that are the main source of non-reacting hypersonic rarefied flow study cases, we address, with our own simulations, unexploited afterbody heating data from former space programs such as Mercury and Apollo. Numerically reconstructed flight data from OREX and the Space Shuttle are also considered. Finally, ionization and radiative environment are discussed through the data collected during Stardust, Fire II and RAM-C II Earth atmospheric entry.