Review of X-43A Return to Flight Activities and Current Status

Abstract

This paper provides an overview and status of the return to flight activities for the X-43A scramjet flight demonstrator after the first flight mishap. The first flight was attempted on June 2, 2001 and resulted in vehicle destruction by range safety when the booster went out of control early in the flight. In the time since the mishap much work has been done to examine the causes of the failure and make modifications to the booster to insure that the boost for the second flight will be successful. In addition, all other aspects of the flight have been examined to maximize the probability of a successful flight.

Research on advanced flight control methods based on actuator constraints for elastic model of hypersonic vehicle

“…If V d and h d in equation (4) are fixed, the trim flight parameters ( r , cr , er ) can be solved completely.…”

“…In this case, we have r ¼ 2:745 , er ¼ À0:55 , cr ¼ 0:21 according to the equilibrium expression in equation (4). And the input commands are Dh d ¼ 10 sin(t) m, ÁV d ¼ 100 m from the above given trim points.…”

“…Furthermore, a thorough simulation of all phases of the X-43A flight was conducted to identify the actuator effectiveness of the control process. 4 Alternatively, the other project, X-38, tasked with developing a new sevenpassenger crew return vehicle had also developed and implemented the electromechanical actuators and the electronic controllers. These actuators and controllers chosen for X-38 were tested to provide an independent evaluation of the actuator performance and to pose minimal safety risk in the complex surrounding.…”

Application of Constraint Force Equation Methodology for Launch Vehicle Stage Separation

“…[14,16]. For performing seamless end-to-end simulations of complete launch vehicle trajectories including stage separation, as recommended by the X-43 A (Hyper-X) return-to-flight review board [17], ADAMS has to be linked to a trajectory simulation code like the Program to Optimize Simulated Trajectories II (POST2) to model internal forces and moments at joints that connect multiple vehicles. However, linking ADAMS® [15] with POST2 for end-to-end simulations is user-intensive and requires elaborate pre and post processing to run ConSep as an interface to ADAMS®.…”

Control Room Training for the Hyper-X Program Utilizing Aircraft Simulation

“…1 The primary research objective was to flight-test an airframe-integrated scramjet, which could pave the way for high-speed aircraft and the next generation of reusable launch vehicles. The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC, Hampton, Virginia) was the Hyper-X program lead, and the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC, Edwards, California) led the flight-test effort.…”