Modeling Aero-assist Flight Mechanics

Numerically integrate the flight path equations of motion of an aero-assist vehicle performing a single atmospheric pass.

This submission is a MATLAB script named demo_aeroassist that can be used to numerically integrate the flight path equations of motion of an aero-assist vehicle. The endo-atmospheric motion of the vehicle is modeled with respect to a spherical, rotating Earth. This MATLAB script provides both numerical and graphical information about the flight mechanics of the aero-assist vehicle during a single pass through the Earth’s atmosphere.

The atmospheric entry conditions and flight controls used in this MATLAB script are derived from a csv mission summary data file created with a Fortran computer program named aeroassist_sos that uses the Sparse Optimization Suiteto solve the aero-assist trajectory optimization problem. Additional details about this Fortran implementation can be found in Appendix A of this document.

Additional information about the mathematical techniques and numerical methods used in the Sparse Optimization Suite software can be found in the book, Practical Methods for Optimal Control and Estimation Using Nonlinear Programming by John. T. Betts, SIAM, 2010.