Modeling and Simulation of Suborbital Flight Profiles and Determination of Related Airspace Restrictions for an Application Scenario in Europe

Abstract

The growing interest in the expansion of commercial space activities is leading to a growing need for launch capacity and consequently the development of new launch sites. Especially the execution of suborbital flights offers new location possibilities due to specific flight profile characteristics and therefore future applications in Europe. The prerequisite for spacecraft operations in airspace is the safe and efficient integration into the ATM system. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has already investigated the effects of suborbital flights on European air traffic using the re-entry trajectory of hypersonic air transport vehicles. In a next step an application scenario for the integration of a suborbital spaceplane into the ATM system including all flight phases from a North German spaceport is considered. The objective is to analyze and subsequently minimize the traffic impact caused by the mission trajectory of the suborbital space vehicle. The design of the mission trajectory combines the assumed flight performance parameters of the spaceplane as well as the local airspace structures. MATLAB is used to calculate the trajectory parameters for the individual flight phases. During start and re-entry phase the spaceplane crosses the airspace where air traffic operates. Traffic separation is ensured by a hazard area whose spatial characteristics are calculated by a suitable established method. Traffic impact simulation is performed with the AirTOp fast time simulation suite and an optimization is performed with the intention to minimize the interaction between the spaceplane trajectory and other airspace users while maintaining mission requirements and flight path characteristics.