Adaptive Guidance and Control for Hypersonic Vehicles

Published in Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics, Vol. 29, No. 3, May–June 2006.Received 23 November 2004; revision received 25 October 2005; accepted for publication 26 October 2005. Copyright 2006 by the authors. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.Guidance and control technology is recognized as an important aspect of the military, civil, and commercial goal of reliable, low-cost, aircraft-type operations into space. Here, several guidance and control methods are extended to enable integration into a single fully adaptive guidance and control system that offers a high degree of mission flexibility, fault tolerance, and autonomy. This paper summarizes the guidance and control system and several research issues related to use of adaptive guidance and control in reusable launch vehicles. Results that demonstrate the ability of the integrated system to plan and fly abort trajectories are also presented