Online trajectory design for Terminal Area Energy Management of Reusable Launch Vehicle

The main purpose of Terminal Area Energy Management (TAEM) is to control the energy of Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), so as to make the RLV arrive at the Auto Landing Interface (ALI) with suitable energy and land safely. However, the high terminal accuracy and physical constraints greatly increase the difficulties of the design of guidance law. This paper analyzes the characteristics of the TAEM, and aiming at the errors of initial position, the trajectory planning algorithm is able to generate a feasible path based on the dynamic pressure profile and ground track geometry rapidly according to several adjustable parameters. Then, the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed TAEM algorithm are demonstrated by the numerical trials with variations on aerodynamic coefficients, initial energy, position and so on.