SHEFEX II Mission Overview and Forst Results

Kurzfassung

Main goal of re-entry experiments is to verify technologies, mainly for thermal protection systems, and simulation tools regarding hypersonic gas flow and structural response. A full scale re-entry test flight is expensive and needs in general a launch system with orbital capacity. To simplify and to reduce costs a step by step approach seems to be practicable and less risky. Thus, sounding rockets are a very attractive vehicle to perform related research. Even, they do not cover the whole performance to accelerate the entry vehicle to real re-entry conditions; they allow generating interesting flight conditions to verify aerodynamic simulation tools. On June 22nd 2012 the second flight within the SHEFEX (Sharp Edge Flight Experiments) development program was successfully performed at Andoya Rocket Range in Norway. Despite of the loss of the hardware, 95% of the expected flight data was collected. This paper will present a short overview of the mission and the first results of the on board experiments. Most of the experiments were related to thermal protection systems and aerodynamic parameters with their structural response, but also innovative concepts for GNC and structural technology for some parts of the launch system could be demonstrated during the SHEFEX II flight. The detailed assessment and evaluation of the flight data will cover a couple of years and PhD’s.