Aerospace Vehicle Entry Flightpath Control

About this technology

Overview

The state-of-the-art in hypersonic entry Guidance and Control (G&C) is traditionally based on rigid entry vehicles, like the Orion capsule, Space Shuttle, etc., that use a Reaction Control System (RCS) to control the bank angle of the vehicle. However, for future high mass missions to Mars, advancements in hypersonic aerospace vehicle design, and evolving science goals, are stretching the performance capabilities of traditional entry systems. NASA’s Pterodactyl team at Ames Research Center has developed a novel yaw-to-bank control system for a non-traditional vehicle configurations, such as a Deployable Entry Vehicle (DEV) that can be folded and stowed. The approach provides vehicle stabilization, steering, and precise targeted landing. This control architecture is agnostic to control actuators and can be used with any aerospace vehicle with a strong dihedral effect and/or different guidance control variables.