The Challenge of Reentry Vehicle Instrumentation
Abstract
This tutorial presents a summary of the environments, problems, and performance of the on-board instrumentation used on the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO) flight test programs to measure reentry vehicle (RV) performance. In addition, a brief description of the off-board instrumentation will be presented. In RV instrumentation, the specific discipline performance areas covered are the thermodynamic and the aerodynamic. Within the aerodynamic discipline are the group of instruments concerned with RV dynamics (gyros, magnetometers, etc.) and with RV fluid dynamic measurements (boundary layer transition and progression sensors, etc.). The thermodynamic instruments include radiation sensors, multiwire isothermal thermocouples, optical seedants, acoustic sensors, calorimeters, etc. The overriding objective of this tutorial is to provide the instrumentation supplier with a detailed feeling for SAMSO's RV instrumentation problems so that the supplier will be able to propose better instruments to solve these problems. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 31, 1978
- Accession Number
- ADA057929
Entities
People
- John M. Cassanto
- Phillip J. Legendre
- Roy G. Fowler
- Wallis R. Grabowsky
Organizations
- The Aerospace Corporation