Mission Analysis and Preliminary Re-entry Trajectory Design of the DLR Reusability Flight Experiment ReFEx

Abstract

Driven by the recently increased demand for investigating reusable launchers, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is currently developing the Reusability Flight Experiment (ReFEx). The goal is to demonstrate the capability of performing an atmospheric re-entry, representative of a possible future winged reusable stage, and to develop and test key technologies for such reusable stages. The flight demonstrator ReFEx shall perform a controlled and autonomous re-entry from hypersonic velocity of approximately Mach 5 down to subsonic velocity after separation from the VSB-30 booster. The focus of this paper is the re-entry trajectory design for the ReFEx mission.