Mini-IRENE, a successful re-entry flight of a deployable heatshield capsule

Mini-IRENE, a successful re-entry flight of a deployable heatshield capsule

Stefano Mungiguerra, Raffaele Savino, Paolo Vernillo, Luca Ferracina, Francesco Punzo, Roberto Gardi, Maurizio Ruggiero, Renato Aurigemma, Pasquale Dell’Aversana, Luciano Gramiccia, Samantha Ianelli, Giovanni D’Aniello, Marta Albano

Abstract. This paper presents some of the results of the suborbital flight of the Mini-IRENE Flight Experiment (MIFE), flight demonstrator of the IRENE technology. A capsule equipped with a deployable heat shield was successfully launched with a VSB-30 suborbital rocket, achieving an apogee of 260 km, a peak deceleration of 12g and surviving the landing with successful retrieval. A huge set of telemetry data was acquired, including GPS, attitude, temperature, acceleration measurements. The capsule showed aerodynamic stability at all flight regimes. The derived drag coefficient was different from the predicted one, possibly due to flexible aero-brake deformation.

Keywords
Deployable Capsule, Sub-Orbital Flight, Flight Data, Aero-Thermo-Dynamic Loads

Published online 11/1/2023, 4 pages
Copyright © 2023 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: Stefano Mungiguerra, Raffaele Savino, Paolo Vernillo, Luca Ferracina, Francesco Punzo, Roberto Gardi, Maurizio Ruggiero, Renato Aurigemma, Pasquale Dell’Aversana, Luciano Gramiccia, Samantha Ianelli, Giovanni D’Aniello, Marta Albano, Mini-IRENE, a successful re-entry flight of a deployable heatshield capsule, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 37, pp 530-533, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644902813-116

The article was published as article 116 of the book Aeronautics and Astronautics

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

References
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