A moving mass trim control system for reentry vehicle guidance

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a movingmass, trim-control system for maneuvering antisymmetric reentry vehicles. The moving-mass trim controller is composed of three equal masses that are independently positioned in order to deliver a desired center of mass position. For a slowly spinning reentry vehicle, the mass offset creates a trim angle-of-at tack to generate modest flight path corrections. A proportional navigation guidance scheme is used to determine the desired lateral accelerations required to hit the target. Mass movements are calculated from the desired lateral accelerations. Simulation results for the integrated guidance and control system are presented for a typical reentry vehicle.