Second-order analytic solutions for re-entry trajectories.

Abstract

With the development of aeroassist technology, either for near-earth orbital transfer with or without a plane change or for planetary aero-capture, it is of interest to have accurate analytic solutions for re-entry trajectories in an explicit form. Starting with the equations of motion of a non-thrusting aerodynamic vehicle entering a non-rotating spherical planetary atmosphere, a normalization technique is used to transform the equations into a form suitable for an analytic integration. Then, depending on the type of planar entry modes with a constant angle-of-attack, namely, ballistic fly-through, lifting skip, and equilibrium glide trajectories, the first-order solutions are obtained with the appropriate simplification. By analytic continuation, the second-order solutions for the altitude, speed, and flight path angle are derived. The closed form solutions lead to explicit forms for the physical quantities of interest, such as the deceleration and aerodynamic heating rates. The analytic solutions for the planar case are extended to three-dimensional skip trajectories with a constant bank angle. The approximate solutions for the heading and latitude are developed to the second order. In each type of trajectory examined, explicit relations among the principal variables are in a form suitable for guidance and navigation purposes. The analytic solutions have excellent agreement with the numerical integrations. They also provide some new results which were not reported in the existing classical theory.