Reentry corridor reference trajectory definition

Atmospheric re-entry is a critical aspect of numerous space missions, playing a pivotal role in ensuring the safe landing of crews for human missions and facilitating the return of experiments or samples to Earth. This challenge also holds implications in the military realm, particularly in the context of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and the advanced hypersonic missiles presently under development. This thesis, developed at Thales Alenia Space in Turin, is centred on lifting body re-entry vehicles within Earth's atmosphere from low Earth orbit. There are three primary objectives: firstly, the development of a trajectory optimization tool capable of deriving optimal lifted re-entry trajectories while adhering to mission-specific constraints. This necessitates the utilization of a direct optimization approach. Secondly, the development and implementation of a guidance and control algorithm for three degrees of freedom flight simulation, ensuring effective tracking of the optimal reference trajectory profile. Thirdly, in the final phase, the model will undergo testing, and results will be compared with existing re-entry vehicles, demonstrating the efficacy and robustness of the algorithms. The entire thesis is developed in Matlab, with a significant use of Matlab’s Global Optimization Toolbox. The outcome of this work is a fast and reliable tool able to compute optimal trajectories for a broad range of scenarios. The guidance and control algorithm has demonstrated its robustness and effectiveness across different spacecraft, as the control gains are optimally calculated according to the vehicle’s characteristics.