USE OF AERODYNAMIC PARAMETERS OF LAUNCH VEHICLE UPPER STAGE TO INJECT SATELLITE TO EARTH ORBIT

摘要

Nowadays several projects of movable take-off for launch vehicle are discussed in the space nations: sea launch, air start, - this permits to generate inclines of space orbits with minimum energy consumption due to varied take-off coordinates. Disadvantages of such projects include creation of expensive launch system infrastructure. An alternative way to initiate an artificial satellite (AS) orbit is to use aerodynamic properties of launch vehicle upper stage during its long-term flight in the Earth atmosphere after separation from the launch vehicle (LV). In this case the upper stage is a flight vehicle with lifting properties [1-3] that accomplishes long-term flight in the atmosphere with varied azimuth angle. Variation of the flight azimuth allows changing the stage plane of motion towards its coincidence with AS orbit plane with given inclination. On the contrary to sea launch and air start, this way of AS injection does not require creation of a new onground infrastructure and is topical if space-vehicle-launching site is situated at high north latitudes. It follows from tentative estimations with this way of AS injection [2,3] that payload mass can be increased as compared with use of traditional ballistic stage.