Results of high-speed flight demonstration phase II

The High-Speed Flight Demonstration (HSFD) project is the latest in a series of flight experiments in a research program into reusable space transportation systems being conducted by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The project consists of two phases: phase I to verify an approach and landing system for the terminal phase of the return flight of a winged reentry vehicle, and phase II to clarify the transonic aerodynamic characteristics of a winged reentry vehicle. The first phase II flight took place on July 1, 2003, at the Esrange test site near Kiruna in Sweden, in collaboration with Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales of France (CNES). Although the experiment had to be discontinued when the demonstrator was damaged after its recovery system malfunctioned, aerodynamic characteristics data were obtained at Mach 0.8 and are being used to evaluate wind tunnel estimates and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) predictions. Fully autonomous flight control technologies for the transonic speed region were also demonstrated. The results are expected to provide essential information for the development of future reusable space transportation systems.