Abstract
This paper presents a new guidance and control system for a re-entry vehicle. In the conventional drag acceleration control system employed for the present space shuttles, the velocity is an unobservable state variable and the associated pole tends to be unstable. Therefore, in this study, a condition which allows all the states to be observable is introduced using a state-space linearization method. It is also shown that energy and its rate are appropriate for the state variables. A guidance law is analytically derived on the basis of the obtained state equation with respect to the energy by solving a two-point boundary-value problem. Furthermore, a tracking control system is designed to make the position, velocity, and flight path angle of the vehicle track the reference states generated in the guidance system. Finally, numerical simulation is performed to verify the validity of the obtained plant expression, and the effectiveness of the proposed guidance and control system.
