The research on an advanced solid propellant rocket started as a successor to the M-V launch vehicle, which is the world's best performance solid propellant rocket that can be utilized for both inter-planetary and solar-synchronous missions. As a next generation launch system, the advanced solid propellant rocket has several special features. The level of user friendliness is increased including: more accurate orbit insertion precision by employing a tiny liquid propellant upper stage and lower acoustic environment by introducing a special ground facility and refined numerical analysis. As for the rocket system, it is optimized from the point of view of both cost and performance, thus leading to significant cost reduction while the payload ratio remains the same as the high-performance M-V. Far beyond these efforts, the research should be most appreciated in the aspect of evolution of the launch system. The advanced solid rocket launcher is loaded with novel design concepts to reform the current launch system into responsive launch, involving an onboard autonomous and intelligent self-check system as well as ultimately compact and efficient ground support facilities. The associated time and labor needed for assembly and checkout are dramatically reduced and the operational performance can be considered the best in the world at the highest standard of the next-generation. The paper describes the general idea of the advanced solid rocket launcher of Japan.

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The Advanced Solid Rocket is a 3-stages solid propellant launch vehicle being developed to provide a more reliable, and responsive space launch system with a lower life-cycle cost for various small satellites. Recently, small satellites or micro satellites including “cube-sat” have been more and more diversified, so that launch vehicles have been required to adjust them. Therefore the Advanced Solid Rocket System is designed to pursue the capabilities of various orbits, and the size of each stage is intended to realize them. Additionally, Post Boost Stage (PBS: Fig.3) as an optional configuration is investigated. This system improve injection accuracy and realize separating satellite after de-spin. Still, some main components are in common use with H-IIA in Japan (Ref.: Fig.5) for reliability and cost reduction.

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JAXA is starting the. concept design of the advanced solid rocket targeting the advanced performance with high reliability and reduced cost which shall be achieved with brief composition of total system, highly responsive launch operation, minimized scale of launch facilities, and flexible operability. The avionics system design is considered a key to achieve the target concept since it shall affects the whole integration policy from manufacturing to flight including the arrangement of ground segments. The paper introduces a basic design concept of the onboard avionics system for the advanced solid rocket.

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The Advanced solid rocket aims at the launch system for small scientific satellites. It has high-level responsive operation to shorten the period from the contract with the satellite to launch (launch life cycle) drastically. It will be a revolution of the vehicle design and operation to shorten the period for vehicle manufacturing, assembling, and checking. The intelligent mission analysis tools will help to revolutionize the vehicle operation. Moreover, it is necessary to use technological accumulation in the development phase, and to set interfaces to various scientific satellite users efficiently. This presentation includes the mission analysis system concept to achieve high-level responsive operation.

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The advanced solid rocket is now under the preliminary design phase. The remarkable concepts of this rocket system is the improved assembly, check-out, and launch operating capability that leads to the responsive launch system. We show the concept design for on-board and autonomous check-out system.

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JAXA has been studying the Advanced Solid Rocket (ASR) that is the successor of the M-V retired in 2006. Its main focus is keeping the excellent performance that had been achieved by M-V and merging the innovative manner of its launch operation, to realize the highly efficient and responsive launch system.

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