A flight control system for microgravity experiments

A flight control system which is capable of reproducing a microgravity environment within a commercial aircraft by forcing it to follow the dynamic behavior of a mass launched in the vacuum is studied. The control problem is formulated as a variational problem and an efficient numerical procedure for the online solution of the problem is given. The solution technique is based on the so-called receding horizon technique. The performance of the proposed control system is illustrated by numerical simulations.<
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