AN ALGORITHM FOR THE SPACECRAFT REENTRY TRAJECTORY

This paper presents a method of calculating the flight parameters of spacecraftreentry trajectory. In this method, the variation of spacecraft mass center position and theflight velocity with the altitude is chosen, and then the other flight parameters of reentrytrajectory are calculated. Based on the kinematic and dynamic equations of the mass centerof spacecraft, the formulae used in the method are derived. Using these formulae, an exampleof the flight data of the Columbia shuttle is calculated to verify the validity of themethod. The agreement between the calculated results and the real reentry results is encouragingand shows that the proposed method is an effective and simple one suitable forthe preliminary calculation of reentry trajectory.