Atmospheric Re-Entry Analysis of Sounding Rocket Payloads

Kurzfassung

The atmospheric re-entry of sounding rocket payloads is an important phase of the ballistic flight, especially when instruments and experiments shall be recovered for future flights or interpretation of experiment data. The understanding of the dynamic behaviour of cylindrical and cone-cylindrical payloads during the reentry is a prerequisite to ensure a successful deployment of the parachute system. This includes not only the knowledge of the payload vehicle attitude and rate data but also the “global view” on deceleration, descent time and terminal recovery velocity. The paper describes the analysis work that has been conducted at the Mobile Rocket base of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on flight data of several TEXUS and MAXUS payloads that have been reviewed and compared.