Orbital re-entry experiment vehicle ground and flight dynamic test results comparison

The angular motion of an orbital re-entry experiment (OREX) vehicle model was tested in a transonic wind tunnel using a single-degree-of-freedom test method to investigate the angular motion of the OREX vehicle. The purpose of the OREX is to test heat shield materials and to obtain measurements of an aerodynamically heated flowfield. Approximate static and dynamic derivatives of the model were measured by a local linear curvefitting method. The angular motion of real OREX flight data was compared with the wind-tunnel test results. The maximum amplitude of the OREX vehicle in the transonic region is almost the same as that obtained in the wind-tunnel test.