What is it about?
When a space plane reenters Earth's atmosphere there can be a large amount of heat energy and structural loads caused from physical interactions with the air molecules in Earth's dense atmosphere. In this research, we studied how these interactions affect the ability of the space plane to travel as far as possible during the reentry from space to the Earth's surface.
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Why is it important?
There is a simple calculation that someone can conduct to determine a close approximation of the maximum range that a vehicle will travel during reentry, but this calculation does not include any limitations that the space plane may have due to atmospheric conditions. This research studied those interactions and provides context about how the performance of a space plane may change due to these interactions.
Perspectives
This research published the results of a study that became important to understand for a variety of reasons that did not seem to be published elsewhere. We had hoped that the solutions to our problem would have a result that was easily approximated by a simple mathematical function but that did not turn out to be the case. Because of this, we sought to include as much information as we could about the problem so that other researchers would be able to repeat our results for specific vehicles.
Emma Webb
Air Force Institute of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Max Range Reentry Optimization in Pseudo 5DOF for Lifting Bodies with Heating and Survivability Constraints, January 2024, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2024-1915.
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