Multistage Free-Flight Testing System

The disclosed technology provides a multistage system for evaluating the free-flight behavior of test articles across of the supersonic, transonic, and subsonic regimes. First, a drop platform is lifted to high altitudes using a lifting device, such as a stratospheric balloon. The drop platform houses multiple projectiles, each containing an ejection mechanism, an on-board avionics suit, and an instrumented test article. Upon reaching the target altitude via the lifting device, the drop platform releases the projectiles sequentially. Each projectile accelerates to a target speed and altitude before ejecting its test article into the freestream. The test articles, such as a scaled re-entry capsule, then collect flight data during their descent through the various Mach regimes, providing valuable insights into their flight performance under mission-relevant conditions. This innovative testing system offers several benefits. It enables the simultaneous testing of multiple vehicles, facilitating the evaluation of design variations as well as statistical analyses of vehicle behavior. This system also provides significant cost savings in comparison to other state-of-the-art testing methods, such as ballistic range testing. Additionally, the test articles within each projectile are easily interchangeable through a simple, modular change of a support surface in the ejection mechanism. This flexibility enables the system to accommodate a range of other aerodynamic technologies, including other vehicles, parachutes, propulsion systems, and defense technologies. This system can enhance the efficiency and robustness of reentry vehicle design, testing, and simulation operations through the collection of rich, flight-relevant data. During atmospheric entry of blunt-body vehicles, such as a crew capsule or planetary probe, travel through the supersonic and transonic regimes can induce divergent instabilities due to dynamic stability issues, the fundamental understanding of which remains incomplete. Traditional qualification methods such as ballistic ranges, wind tunnels, and computation simulations can provide aerodynamic performance data for various flight conditions, but each has limitations or requires extensive validation. To address the need to understand dynamic stability issues of re-entry vehicles, NASA Ames has developed a multistage flight system architecture capable of testing vehicles through supersonic and transonic Mach numbers. This architecture enables the acquisition of rich, flight-relevant data related to dynamic stability and other key aerodynamic parameters.