Mission engineering for the RETALT VTVL launcher

Abstract

In the last decade, the rapid and successful development of reusable launch systems such as SpaceX’ Falcon 9 demonstrated both the operational feasibility of reusable launchers and their economic viability. The objective of recovering a launcher or a launcher’s booster requires to safely return the launch vehicle from orbital or sub-orbital conditions to a soft landing. To increase the reusability, decrease the turnaround time and reduce costs, a precise touchdown on a pre-defined landing site or on a floating barge on the Ocean is preferred to splashdown in the water, due mainly to the highly detrimental effect of the salted water on the launcher components and equipment. The project RETALT (Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies) was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program to study and develop critical technologies for launcher recovery based on retro-propulsion. In this context, and based on in-house experience and tools, DEIMOS Space carried out the mission engineering of the RETALT1 vehicle concept to assess the feasibility of a return mission, from a wide range of Main Engine Cut-Off (MECO) conditions, when the stage is separated from the rest of the launch vehicle, in line with the available propellant budget, and while maintaining the peak entry conditions within acceptable limits. Either a DownRange Landing (DRL) on a drone ship at sea or a Return To Launch Site (RTLS) to land in the proximity of the launch pad is performed based on the velocity and distance at MECO from the launch site. For the landing burn, a safe splashdown approach has been implemented to avoid damaging the ground infrastructure in case of anomalies during the flight. Based on the mission feasibility assessment, the needs for the vehicle recovery have been identified, leading to the definition of preliminary mission requirements at the system and subsystem level. Consequently, the consolidation of the return mission design was possible and optimised trajectories have been defined for the DRL and RTLS scenarios.