| Popis: |
For the sake of sustainability, space industry provides great efforts in the research of rocket recovery and reusability systems. The PERSEUS project (Programme Etudiant de Recherche Spatiale Europeen Universitaire et Scientifique) initiated by CNES adapted its roadmap towards this kind of technology three years ago. The general aim of PERSEUS is to help students discover space programs through innovative projects so that they get interested in embracing a professional carrier in space industy. As part of the PERSEUS project, our association Ipsa Space Systems decided to begin the very first study on GNC Parafoil to recover a rocket stage as soon as PERSEUS announced its new roadmap. It was the moment the IPER (ISS Parafoil Experimental Rocket) project was born, hoping to demonstrate a first rocket recovery by self-guided (GNC) parafoil system. IPER is a 3 meters long experimental rocket with a diameter of 160 mm. It has a dry mass of 15 kg at launch and an apogee expected to reach around 1190 meters, which gives enough time to control the parafoil and respect the rules imposed by the launch site specifications. The rocket is composed of three different parts coupled with three separation systems. Each part is equipped with a chute in order to recover the entire rocket in all possible flight scenarios. The main chute is a five meters wingspan parafoil controlled with actuators. The second parachute recovers the fairing part, and the last one is an emergency chute that is to be deployed if anything goes wrong during the flight. In a nominal flight scenario, the parafoil will bring back the rocket body and all its subsystems to specified coordinates. IPERs flight plan is to deploy the first (drag) chute at apogee in order to descend at a sink rate of 17 m/s. When reaching an altitude of 500 meters, the wingspan parafoil is to be deployed after the separation of the nose cone that will descend alone under the drag chute. The vertical speed of the rocketss body will then decrease to 2 m/s. Two actuators connected to the parafoils brakes will control the descent trajectory until landing. If for any reason one of the previous chutes does not deploy as intended, the safety separation system will ensure a safe return to the ground. The IPER rocket demonstrator already flew in 2021 after two years of development. The goal of this test flight was to experiment all the different subsystems without the GNC since it was not complete at this time. Several protoyped tests have also been realized in order to experimentally establish a mathematical model for the parafoils behaviour during the flight. For next and last launch in July 2022, the objective is to finally fly and recover the rocket with GNC parafoil. |
