A NEW TRAJECTORY OPTIMISATION TOOL (ALTOS) APPLIED TO CONVENTIONAL LAUNCHERS

ALTOS is a newly developed Advanced Launcher Trajectory Optimisation Software. This new tool can be characterised by its three main features: Modelisation of the ascent vehicle, of the ascent trajectory and of constraints, 3DoF ascent trajectory simulation, 3 DoF ascent trajectory optimisation based on the direct collocation and direct multiple shooting method. In this present paper, the results obtained with ALTOS for conventional launchers such as Ariane 5 are presented together with the experience gained during the study of the operation and the performance characteristics of the tool.