Flight Instrumentation for the SHEFEX II Re-Entry Mission

Kurzfassung

For a low cost access to space with a high level of reliability, the design cycle duration has to be reduced and the service and refurbishment of the space vehicle have to be simplified. A complex geometry of the TPS components of operational space vehicles like the Space Shuttle leads to expensive manufacturing and maintenance processes. TPS structures consisting of flat ceramic panels could be a realistic solution to reduce the costs and improve the aerodynamic performance of space vehicles. Although ground testing still provides the main design data, a complete simulation of the flight conditions is often not possible. Therefore flight experiments are the most effective tool to obtain validation data for the design under real conditions. To test these new sharp edged TPS structures (flat tiles) the DLR successfully performed the SHEFEX I flight experiment and is now preparing a second flight experiment SHEFEX II in 2010 [1]. The SHEFEX II flight configuration includes more than 100 sensors and a new type of Flush Airdata Sensing (FADS) System for the sharp edged configuration, which will be tested during flight and pre-flight qualification tests. Using a two staged sounding rocket system the experiment time is increased up to 60 seconds and the maximum flight Mach number will be about 11. An active steering system using four canards is used for a controlled re-entry varying the roll angle and angle of attack. This paper presents the instrumentation of the ceramic thermal protection system (TPS) consisting of 40 flat ceramic tiles and a massive ceramic nose which form the SHEFEX II forebody. Fig. 1 illustrates the complete configuration including the SHEFEX II payload and the two staged launcher.