TPS health monitoring on X-38

摘要

Health monitoring passenger experiments will be flown on board of X-38 re-entry demonstrator as precursor to reusable launch vehicles such as the Crew Rescue Vehicle. Environmental load impacts and load critical conditions of the Thermal Protection System will be monitored with advanced in-flight and on-ground sensor instrumentation, the structural and functional integrity assessed, and potential consequences regarding the probability of hazardous failure or reduced life time evaluated. Intelligent health monitoring systems can streamline operational and maintenance costs while at the same time satisfying the high safety and reliability requirements. This imposes more stringent requirements on a network of sensors based on innovative technologies such as fiber optics, acoustic emissions, etc. The current development activities within the frame of the national technology program X-38/TETRA, the specific sensor features and the diagnostic expert system for data analyses will be highlighted and discussed in this paper.