Attitude Control Performance of IRVE-3

The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment 3 (IRVE-3) launched July 23, 2012, from NASA Wallops Flight Facility and successfully performed its mission, demonstrating both the survivability of a hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator in the reentry heating environment and the effect of an offset center of gravity on the aeroshell's flight L/D. The reentry vehicle separated from the launch vehicle, released and inflated its aeroshell, reoriented for atmospheric entry, and mechanically shifted its center of gravity before reaching atmospheric interface. Performance data from the entire mission was telemetered to the ground for analysis. This paper discusses the IRVE-3 mission scenario, reentry vehicle design, and as-flown performance of the attitude control system in the different phases of the mission

Flight Performance of the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment 3

The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment 3 (IRVE-3) launched July 23, 2012, from NASA Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on a Black Brant XI suborbital sounding rocket and successfully performed its mission, demonstrating the survivability of a hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD) in the reentry heating environment and also illustrating the effect of an offset center of gravity on the HIAD's lift-to-drag ratio. IRVE-3 was a follow-on to 2009's IRVE-II mission, which demonstrated exo-atmospheric inflation, reentry survivability - without significant heating - and the aerodynamic stability of a HIAD down to subsonic flight conditions. NASA Langley Research Center is leading the development of HIAD technology for use on future interplanetary and Earth reentry missions

IRVE-3 Post-Flight Reconstruction

The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment 3 (IRVE-3) was conducted from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on July 23, 2012. Launched on a Black Brant XI sounding rocket, the IRVE-3 research vehicle achieved an apogee of 469 km, deployed and inflated a Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD), re-entered the Earth's atmosphere at Mach 10 and achieved a peak deceleration of 20 g's before descending to splashdown roughly 20 minutes after launch. This paper presents the filtering methodology and results associated with the development of the Best Estimated Trajectory of the IRVE-3 flight test. The reconstructed trajectory is compared against project requirements and pre-flight predictions of entry state, aerodynamics, HIAD flexibility, and attitude control system performance