Speaker
Mr
Rodrigo Haya Ramos
(SENER)
Description
The Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) is an ESA re-entry lifting body demonstrator built to verify in-flight the performance of critical re-entry technologies. The IXV was launched on February the 11th, 2015, aboard Europe’s Vega launcher.
The IXV´s flight and successful recovery represents a major step forward with respect to previous European re-entry experience with the Atmospheric Re-entry Demonstrator (ARD), flown in October 1998. The increased in-flight manoeuvrability achieved from the lifting body solution permitted the verification of technologies over a wider re-entry corridor. Among other objectives, which included the characterization of the re-entry environment through a variety of sensors, special attention was paid to GNC aspects, including the guidance algorithms for the unique lifting body, the use of the inertial measurement unit measurements with GPS updates for navigation, and the flight control by means of aerodynamic flaps and reaction control thrusters.
From a wider perspective, the development chain for the GNC starts from the shape conception, which implements the control authority needed during orbit and atmospheric flight, up to the production of the flight software which implements the GNC design. In IXV, the design and verification of the GNC has followed an ECSS based approach in which analysis (ex: Monte Carlo simulations) and test (processor and hardware in the loop) have been the main elements of validation to deliver a Qualified product and to verify the GNC for the last set of parameters before flight.
The successful flight of IXV has constituted the final verification of the GNC and hence a significant milestone for Europe: the ARD flight demonstrated the GNC for a capsule and the flight of IXV has verified the GNC for a lifting body using active flaps. The flight constitutes not only the final validation of the GNC but also a valuable source for verification and tuning of methods and tools. Several steps in the postflight analysis are foreseen which incrementally will exploit the flight performance using different tools and techniques. An initial postflight analysis has been conducted using several inspection, simulation and reconstruction techniques.
This paper describes on one side the overall design, verification and missionisation process for IXV with emphasis in the tools and techniques that have been applied, which include either engineering tools to formal analysis tools like the Functional Engineering Simulator (FES) or the Real Time Test _Bench (RTTB). On the other, the techniques used to derive the initial in-flight verification of the GNC will be presented as well as the main results and conclusions.
| Applicant type | Co-author |
|---|
Primary author
Mr
Rodrigo Haya Ramos
(SENER)
Co-authors
Dr
Murray KERR
(Elecnor Deimos)
Mr
Victor Marco
(SENER)
