Felice FRUNCILLO, Antonio VITALE, Francesco CASCONE, Marco MARINI, Sara DI BENEDETTO, Marta ALBANO, Roberto BERTACIN
DOI Number: N/A
Conference number: HiSST-2025-282
The Italian Aerospace Research Centre and the Italian Space Agency are developing a Scramjet Hypersonic Experimental Vehicle, with the aim to design and test in flight enabling technologies for the implementation of the future transportation systems at hypersonic speed. The experimental mission envisages an air-launched solution, composed by a subsonic carrier that releases a rocket-based launch system, which is in charge of delivering the hypersonic vehicle to its experimental window. Flight mechanics analyses play a fundamental role in the design of the mission, the launch system and the experimental vehicle. This paper presents the flight mechanics analyses performed to assess the
feasibility of the ascent leg of the mission performed by the launch system. It describes the methodology applied to assess the launch system flying qualities and to define its nominal trajectory. The paper highlights the challenges to be faced with in executing such analyses and discusses the obtained results which provide useful information concerning system configuration and mission definition and confirm the feasibility of the flight test.