Exoatmospheric Thrust Vector Interception Via Time-to-Go Analysis

In exoatmospheric interception, steering jets is the only possible method to move a vehicle. A nonlinear vector guidance law based on a saddle-point inequality with respect to miss distance as well as capture time is presented and analyzed for both ideal and nonideal interceptors. The time to go is found to be a quartic polynomial equation, and an algebraic “first-pass” capture zone is presented. To eliminate the non-minimum-phase property of the standard thrust vector control, the paper proposes a translation without rotation interceptor configuration.