Speaker
Mr
Martins Sudars
(Thales Alenia Space Italia)
Description
IXV (Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle) re-entry vehicle has successfully flown a fully autonomous mission from the launch until it’s splashdown in the eastern Pacific Ocean on 11th February 2015, and has been regarded as a major milestone in European re-entry technology roadmap. The vehicle has been designed to fly autonomously without the commanding from ground and without a need for a continuous downlink. It’s trajectory and attitude however had to be closely monitored in MCC for operational and safety purposes including when out of the visibility window. For this purpose a dedicated too has been developed - TPVT (Trajectory Propagation and Visualization Tool).
The tool updated the current state and trajectory predictions based on the IXV vital-layer telemetry data whenever it was in the direct visibility of any of the ground stations, and also taking into account latest atmospheric measurements by the sounding balloons. In order to represent the vehicle’s behavior as close as possible, the same GNC algorithms have been implemented in the propagation algorithm. For sake of propagation velocity the utilized models had to be kept simple in order to allow regular update of the trajectory every couple of seconds whenever fresh telemetry data was available. The propagated trajectory was displayed for the MCC operators for monitoring purposes, and the current state vector transmitted to the naval ground station in specific antenna pointing data format in order to facilitate the acquisition of the signal on the naval station. At the end of the mission the TPVT had an essential role in the vehicle’s localization by providing an updated expected splashdown position, where it was found by the recovery ship’s crew just 20 minutes later.
This paper gives and overview of various features of the tool, its interfaces with the MCC, visualization features, and also an assessment of its propagation performance during the real mission.
| Applicant type | First author |
|---|
Primary author
Mr
Martins Sudars
(Thales Alenia Space Italia)
Co-authors
Mr
Francesco Santilli
(Thales Alenia Space Italia)
Mr
Gerhard Billig
(ESA)
Mr
Ivano Amador Caddeo
(GMSpazio Srl.)
Mr
Salvatore Mancuso
(ESA)
