Ares I-X Range Safety Simulation and Analysis IV and V

Australia has recently introduced a new capability for space launch and re-entry Risk Hazard Analysis (RHA) into service. This capability, called the Range Safety Template Toolkit (RSTT), was originally developed for air-launched guided weapons but is now being applied to two very different space safety applications. The first is the US/Australia HIFiRE hypersonics research program and the other is the return to Earth of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa spacecraft in mid-2010. RSTT offers rapid (minutes to hours) generation of mission-specific safety templates. The templates can be combined with geospatial information, such as asset locations and population densities, to provide casualty and damage estimates for operational planning and safety analysis. The templates are generated from a set of ground impact points generated specifically for the mission. Creation of the ground impact point database for a mission is a computationally-intensive activity that simulates all (reasonably) possible failures and trajectories using a Six-Degree-of-Freedom (6-DOF) model of the vehicle system including Failure Response Modes (FRMs). RSTT is able to support experimental vehicle design by including design parameter tolerances as part of the launch envelope thus eliminating the need to 'lock down' design before producing an RHA. It also includes a new methodology for predicting the breakup of vehicles called 'fractal fragmentation'. This estimates the distribution of fragments based on successive breakup into smaller fragments, the 'degree' being dependent on the excess energy available. It seamlessly handles explosions, aerodynamic breakup, and combined events.

2009

Australia has recently introduced a new capability for space launch and re-entry Risk Hazard Analysis (RHA) into service. This capability, called the Range Safety Template Toolkit (RSTT), was originally developed for air-launched guided weapons but is now being applied to two very different space safety applications. The first is the US/Australia HIFiRE hypersonics research program and the other is the return to Earth of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa spacecraft in mid-2010. RSTT offers rapid (minutes to hours) generation of mission-specific safety templates. The templates can be combined with geospatial information, such as asset locations and population densities, to provide casualty and damage estimates for operational planning and safety analysis. The templates are generated from a set of ground impact points generated specifically for the mission. Creation of the ground impact point database for a mission is a computationally-intensive activity that s...

The military, civilian and commercial demands on space access are expected to experience a continuing increase. The many potential applications have been greeted by a plethora of new launch vehicle concepts with promises to enable more launches with reduced cost and improved reliability. The expectation that some reusable launch vehicles can operate to and from regular runways suggests the possibility of having spaceports conveniently located over the continental US. However, the prospects of allocating reserved airspace to support the increasing frequency of launches will likely be unwelcome to the air transportation community. Furthermore, the relatively lower reliability of space transportation vehicles compared to that of air transportation vehicles means that their operational requirements will need to look beyond normal operations to account for their impact on the air traffic and ground populations. An analysis tool has been developed to facilitate the study of new launch veh...

2016

A detailed description of the uncertainty quantification process for the Space Launch System Block 1 vehicle configuration liftoff/transition and ascent 6-Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) aerodynamic databases is presented. These databases were constructed from wind tunnel test data acquired in the NASA Langley Research Center 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel and the Boeing Polysonic Wind Tunnel in St. Louis, MO, respectively. The major sources of error for these databases were experimental error and database modeling errors.

The Meteorological And Range Safety Support (MARSS) system provides the Air Force and NASA safety and meteorological user communities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Patrick Air Force Base (PAFB), NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) with an integrated, responsive, and near real-time capability to analyze, predict, and assess the potential toxicological and blast damage hazards associated with Eastern Range (ER) and Western Range (WR) launch and range operations. The RSA MARSS version has several new models/versions, new external model interfaces/displays, a new live GIS map display, and many other open source components and interfaces. This version of MARSS has been ported to the Linux operating system (first RHAS 2.1, then later to RHEL5) as part of the Range Standardization and Automation (RSA) program. The RSA MARSS is required to integrate with several legacy instrumentation systems, as well as both the new RSA weather systems and the RSA LAPS and MM5 implementations (the latter is essentially the latest WFO software with local data ingest to support the AF and NASA users).

This article describes requirements and methods employed to ensure safety during sounding rocket launches. Sounding rockets are typically rail launched on suborbital trajectories with no active guidance systems; instead fins are used to stabilize the rocket by moving the center of pressure behind the center of gravity. Fins mounted at an angle to induce spin about the roll axis are a particularly effective means to maintain flight along the intended trajectory. This article reports on the application of high fidelity trajectory and debris impact dispersion analysis methods and launcher setting optimization techniques to prevent debris impacts outside of the predetermined hazard areas for multi-stage spin-stabilized sounding rockets. Accurate trajectory analyses, for nominal and malfunction conditions, are critical to the safety of sounding rocket launches, whether or not a risk assessment is performed. Therefore, a significant section of this article addresses requirements and methods for high fidelity trajectory analyses, including lessons learned from recent experiences. Examples are presented to demonstrate that a full six degree-of-freedom trajectory analysis is necessary to compute accurate impact dispersions for sounding rockets with significant angular momentum. The importance of angular momentum to the flight dynamics of a typical spin stabilized rocket highlights the desirability of a nominal impact dispersion analysis that uses the Monte Carlo technique to account for the non-linear effects of various combinations of input parameter perturbations, such as launch elevation and thrust angle, or thrust offset and thrust angle. This article also describes requirements and methods used for public risk management of sounding rockets, including risks to people in various transportation modes such as aircraft, ships, and automobiles. This article assesses generic types of sounding rocket anomalies, such as fin failures, motor case ruptures, or staging anomalies, and illustrates methods to address these types of events from a range safety perspective.

This paper describes requirements and methods employed to ensure safety during sounding rocket launches. Sounding rockets are typically rail launched with no active guidance systems; instead fins are used to stabilize the rocket by moving the center of pressure behind the center of gravity. Fins mounted at an angle to induce spin about the roll axis are a particularly effective means to maintain flight along the intended trajectory. This paper reports on the application of high fidelity trajectory and debris impact dispersion analysis methods and launcher setting optimization techniques to prevent debris impacts outside of the pre-determined hazard areas for multi-stage spin-stabilized sounding rockets. Accurate trajectory analyses, for nominal and malfunction conditions, are critical to the safety of sounding rocket launches, whether or not a risk assessment is performed. Therefore, a significant section of this paper addresses requirements and methods for high fidelity trajectory analyses, including lessons learned from recent experiences. Examples are presented to demonstrate that a full six degree-of-freedom trajectory analysis is necessary to compute accurate impact dispersions for sounding rockets with significant angular momentum. The importance of angular momentum to the flight dynamics of a typical spin stabilized rocket highlights the desirability of a nominal impact dispersion analysis that uses the Monte Carlo technique to account for the non-linear effects of various combinations of input parameter perturbations, such as launch elevation and thrust angle, or thrust offset and thrust angle. This paper also describes requirements and methods used for public risk management of unguided suborbital rockets, including risks to people in various transportation modes such as aircraft, ships, and automobiles. This paper assesses generic types of sounding rocket anomalies, such as fin failures, motor case ruptures, or staging anomalies, and illustrates methods to address these types of events from a range safety perspective.

Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, 2012

The launch environment is a challenging regime to work due to changing system dynamics, changing environmental loading, joint compression loads that cannot be easily applied on the ground, and control effects. Operational testing is one of the few feasible approaches to capture system level dynamics since ground testing cannot reproduce all of these conditions easily. However, the most successful applications of Operational Modal Testing involve systems with good stationarity and long data acquisition times. This paper covers an ongoing effort to understand the launch environment and the utility of current operational modal tools. This work is expected to produce a collection of operational tools that can be applied to non-stationary launch environment, experience dealing with launch data, and an expanding database of flight parameters such as damping. This paper reports on recent efforts to build a software framework for the data processing utilizing existing and specialty tools; understand the limits of current tools; assess a wider variety of current tools; and expand the experience with additional datasets as well as to begin to address issues raised in earlier launch analysis studies.

43rd AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, 2007

The U.S. Vision for Space Exploration guides NASA's challenging missions of scientific discovery.' Developing safe, reliable, and affordable space transportation systems for the human and robotic exploration of space is a key component of fulfilling the strategic goals outlined in the Vision, as well as in the U.S. Space Policy.-' In October 2005, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and its Constellation Program chartered the Exploration Launch Projects Office, located at the Marshall Space Flight Center, to design, develop, test, and field a new generation of launch vehicles that would fulfill customer and stakeholder requirements for trips to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

2013

An upgrade of the DRAMA (Debris Risk Assessment and Mitigation Analysis) tool is currently under development by TUBS (Technische Universität Braunschweig) and DEIMOS Space. The upgraded tool comprises six modules which address different aspects of debris mitigation. This paper deals with the ARES (Assessment of Risk Event Statistics) module, which provides an assessment of the annual collision risk and manoeuvre rate for a given satellite. For the upgrade of the ARES module, typical uncertainties associated with NORAD TLE and JSpOC CSM were determined. This paper briefly describes the ARES tool, describes the method used to determine the uncertainties, and shows examples of the tool applied to some missions.