Real-Time Attitude and Trajectory Measurement for Small Hypersonic Reentry Vehicles

Real-time attitude and trajectory measurement for small hypersonic reentry vehicles James Lump and Savio Poovathingal NASA Kentucky RFP RFP-24-001 February 2024 Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) play a critical role in mitigating the intense heating experienced during hypersonic entry into the atmospheres of Mars, Venus, and outer planets. Efficient TPS are equally essential for manned and sample-return missions re-entering Earth''s atmosphere. Despite the need, only a limited number of high-speed entry experiments have been conducted in the past 50 years. These flights, integral to costly exploration programs, generally focused on final designs of TPS. Arc-jet and hypersonic tunnel testing is often used during the development of TPS, however, these only approximate actual flight conditions. Recognizing the need for a cost-effective test-bed to reliably and efficiently evaluate TPS materials in actual flight conditions, the Kentucky Re-entry Universal Payload System (KRUPS) was developed. KRUPS is a small entry capsule that has successfully tested several TPS materials as well as instrumentation to monitor and downlink data. While previous instrumentation packages have measured temperatures and forces acting on the capsule, the attitude and stability of the attitude of the capsules have not been measured. The in-flight attitude of the KRUPS capsules can affect the behavior of the TPS and supersonic capsules can be affected by many factors, from the mach number and mass distribution within the vehicle to the effects of the aft-body shape. The goal of this project is to enhance the overall quality of data used to monitor TPS materials in KRUPS by gathering real-time attitude and trajectory information on the capsules