Landing Footprint Computation for Entry Vehicles

A method is developed for generating landing footprints for entry vehicles in near realtime, as needed for an on-board flight management system. The method described in the paper is built around a previously developed, acceleration-based trajectory planner. The boundary of the footprint is constructed from the endpoints of extreme downrange or crossrange trajectories generated by the planner. The strengths of the method include fast computation time, respecting path constraints such as vehicle heating limits, accounting for Coriolis effects and constructing angle of attack profiles that are nearly optimal for long range glide. The accuracy of the landing footprint generator is determined by direct comparison with footprints computed with a general purpose optimization program.