Releasing, Approach and Landing Results of the ALFLEX First Landing Trial

摘要

The flight experiment of the ALFLEX (Automatic Landing Flight Experiment) vehicle, a scaled model of HOPE, was conducted to establish unmanned guidance, navigation and control technologies for automatic landing of HOPE. The first landing of the ALFLEX vehicle was made on July 6, 1996 followed by 12 more landings until August 15, 1996. This first landing was achieved after a series of hanging flight trials with a helicopter that confirmed the vehicle functions and calibrated the sensors. Also, prior to these flight tests in Australia, hanging flights had been repeated in Japan as preliminary tests. To provide examples of the experiences and lessons from the unmanned landing tests, this report summarizes the detailed procedures, results and problems with the first landing trial, which has yielded useful results.