A NEW GUIDANCE TECHNIQUE FOR DISCRETE-EVENT DRAG MODULATION FOR AEROCAPTURE MISSIONS

This paper introduces a new guidance algorithm for discrete-event drag-modulated aerocapture, inspired by the concepts of variation-of-parameters and osculating orbits. The algorithm is implemented and tested in a high-fidelity simulation developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the case of an Earth flight demonstration of aerocapture using a rigid drag skirt. The algorithm takes the spacecraft navigation-estimated position and velocity and computes a jettison time for the drag skirt, and the performance of the new algorithm is compared to a numerical predictor-corrector (NPC) approach.