Development of the stars composite payload fairing

Under contract to Sandia National Laboratories, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace has developed a new launch vehicle payload fairing. Sandia refurbishes and flies surplus Polaris missiles reconfigured into a target vehicle called the Strategic TARget System (STARS). The STARS flights are part of strategic missile defense experiments. The new fairing was required because the original Polaris fairing was inadequate for some of the STARS missions. Of the many fairings developed and produced by McDonnell Douglas (primarily for the Delta and Titan vehicles), this is the first one fabricated from graphite/epoxy composite materials. The design, analysis (structural, thermal, and separation), fabrication, assembly, testing, and flight of the new composite fairing are described in this paper.