Preliminary Design of the Hybrid Air-launching Rocket for Nanosat

Jae-Woo Lee, Kyung-Ho Noh and Yung-Hwan Byun

Department Aerospace Information Engineering, Konkuk University, Korea
Bong-Kyo Park
Hanwha Corporation
jwlee@konkuk.ac.kr


Abstract

Air-Launching is an effective method that can
launch the 'Nanosat' for low launching cost. In this
study, the preliminary design of the air-launching
micro rocket was performed. Mission and trajectory
optimization was performed and the propulsion system
was designed based on the mission design. A
supersonic air launching rocket with total weight of
830.95 kg, the payload weight of 3.56 kg and the
propulsion system length of 5.89 m has been designed.

1. Introduction

Recently, the demand for the small satellites is
growing and many countries which hold advanced
technology in the space launcher development,
concentrate on the development of the rockets for the
small satellites. For the development of very small
satellites, less than 10 kg of weight, the space
technology which applies the MEMS(Micro-Electro
Mechanical Systems) is necessary[1, 2].
Very small satellites can be classified into two
categories; Nano-satellites, which weigh around 1 -
10kg, and pico-satellites, which weigh around 0.1 -
1kg[3]. Several nanosats have been developed till now:
the QQW1 of 4 kg weight, the ODERACS series
satellites of 5 kg weight, and 3 kg satellites like the
SPUTNIK-40 and the TUBSAT-N[1]. Nanosat is
regarded as the future-oriented new technology which
can overcome the limits of the small and micro
satellites. Key factors when designing or selecting a
launch vehicle are the launch cost and the launch
capacity, i.e. the weight of the satellite to be carried.
Because the launch cost per unit mass will grow as the
weight of the satellite become smaller, either several
nanosats must be launched together or, the nanosat
launched with the large satellite. Hence the launching
time and the operation of the satellite are limited.
Therefore, new launching method can launch the
nanosat individually with low launching cost. 'air-
launching' can be a solution.
By implementing air-launching, there would be no
restrictions on the launch sites, the launch angle and
the launch direction. This can be a very strong point
especially to the countries where the satellite launching
is very difficult owing to the geographical reasons, like
Korea. Moreover, "air-launch" is a very economical
way of launching satellites compared with the ground-
launch, because it can utilize the high initial launching
speed from the mother plane, and the improved thrust
efficiency resulted from low dynamic pressure and big
nozzle expansion ratio at high altitude[4, 5].
Among the air-launching rocket system developed
until now, there are NOTS and Cabel. NOTS, the first
air-launching rocket, was launched by a Douglas F-4D
Skyray airplane. As the vehicle was designed for
maximum simplicity, it featured no moving parts. All
launches apparently failed, most due to structural
failures. The first and third orbital attempts could have
possibly orbited their payloads, as tracking stations
picked up signals, which could have originated from
the payload. After 10 launches the program was
discontinued and a improved vehicle, called Caleb,
was developed[6]. The Pegasus and the Burlak are
more recent air-launchers. In the M-3S II User Guide,
ISAS of Japan also announced its intention to develop
air-launching rockets for the small satellite using M-V
rocket[7].
Pegasus is a small commercial launch vehicle
developed by Orbital Science Corporation. It is a three-
stage, solid-propellant, inertially guided, all-composite
winged space booster. The Pegasus has been carried
aloft by a specially modified Lockheed L-1011 carrier
aircraft to level flight launch conditions of
approximately 11.9 km altitude and Mach number of
0.8. Pegasus follows a nearly vacuum optimized lifting
ascent trajectory to orbit, carrying 275 kg payloads to
480 km polar orbits as well as proportional payloads to
Fifth International Conference on Computational Science and Applications
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Fifth International Conference on Computational Science and Applications
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Fifth International Conference on Computational Science and Applications
0-7695-2945-3/07 $25.00 2007 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSA.2007.16
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other altitudes and inclinations or suborbital
trajectories[8].
Burlak, a Russian Pegasus, uses a liquid propellant
and is launched at 13.5km with a supersonic speed,
M=1.7 from the Tu-160 bomber[5]. As the launching
speed from the mother plane increases, the weight and
launch cost can be reduced, therefore the
supersonically launching Burlak is more advantageous
than the Pegasus, launched at subsonic speed. Various
air-launchers are shown at Fig. 1.


Figure 1. Air-launching rockets

In this study, the design process of the three-stage
air-launching rocket system shall be defined first, and
the mission design, the conceptual and preliminary
design and system optimization will be performed.

2. Air-Launching Rocket Design Process

For the air-launching rocket design, like the aircraft
design, many technical areas like aerodynamics,
propulsion analysis are involved from the concept
exploration stage, hence an integrated design
consideration among all the related engineering fields
is crucial to acquire the best design solution with given
constraints in order to reduce the design changes or
resulting development cost.
When developing a system, with which many
engineering disciplines are highly coupled like rocket
system design, the classical separate single discipline
design approach is difficult to apply, because most
design variables are coupled with many engineering
phenomena. To resolve the problems which occur
during the design optimization procedure,
Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO)
techniques, which can handle complex engineering
problems with many design variables and constraints
from various technical disciplines, are required[9].

Figure 2. Air-launching rocket design process

With given design requirements, rocket mission is
defined first. Then the propulsion system including the
rocket motor, the oxidizer feeding system, and the
fuel/oxidizer control system is designed. Through
stability and control analysis and aerodynamic
analysis, the wing and tails are designed. Subsystem
are defined and designed. The material properties of
the major structural components and subsystems are
defined hence, approximate weight of the rocket
system is estimated. The optimized design can not be
obtained at one design cycle, several design iterations
are required. The rocket design process is shown at
Fig. 2.
In this study, the mission design, the trajectory
design and optimization, propulsion system design,
wing design, and the subsystem design will be
performed.

3. Design of the Hybrid Air-launching
Rocket for nanosat

3.1. Mission Design and Optimization

The mission design process of the air-launching
rocket system can be divided into several parts. Based
on the given design conditions and mission
291 291 291
requirements, the characteristics of the propulsion and
basic aerodynamic parameters are determined. The
required velocity to launch the payload to the pre-
specified orbit, the mass ratio of each stage, and the
structural coefficient are estimated. From the simple
empirical equations, the total required velocity of the
launcher is calculated by considering the gravity, the
drag, and the thrust loss. The required total velocity is
distributed to each stage in order to have the minimum
total weight. From the trajectory analysis and
optimization, a mission profile which can minimize the
total rocket weight, is derived. This process is repeated
until the design constraints are all satisfied.
For the air-launching rocket design study, F-4E,
which has the best weapon load capacity in ROK Air
Force inventory, is selected as the mother plane. The
lowest possible latitude location while not going
through the main land of Japan, must be selected as the
air-launching site, in order to maximize the earth
rotation effect. The mother plane will take off at the
Jeju airport (the longitude 12629 42 , the latitude
of 3330 29 ), and the launching location is the
longitude 125, the latitude of 30(Refer Fig. 3). The
total mission radius is approximately 682 km.
For the mission analysis of the mother plane, the
mission profile is divided into 16 mission segments
and the "MISS V 2.01"[10], a general aircraft mission
analysis program, is utilized. Total required fuel
weight is 12000 lb, 4670 lb less than the maximum
fuel weight of the F-4E. Therefore, it is demonstrated
that the flight mission of the mother plane to the launch
location is possible.
Launch location

Figure 3. Air-launching location

From the variables determined so far, the total
required velocity to launch the rocket to the specified
orbit is calculated using the empirical equations. Drag
is influenced only on the first stage, and the velocity
loss due to the atmospheric pressure is neglected,
considering the low atmospheric pressure and high
thrust-to-weight ratio during the second and third
stages. In addition, velocity gain from the rotation of
the earth, and the air-launching initial velocity gain are
included in the determination of the total required
velocity of the launcher. The obtained required
velocity is 8966 m/s. The total velocity is distributed to
each stage of the rocket in order to minimize the rocket
weight. Table 1 shows the result.

Table 1. Velocity distribution
Stage Structure(kg) Propellant(kg) Payload(kg) Total(kg)
3rd 2.95 10.45 3.5 16.90
2nd 16.69 62.77 17.43 96.36
Fairing 10.0
1st 152.15 572.36 106.36 830.87

3.2. Trajectory Optimization

The trajectory analysis and optimization code is
developed using the simple equations of motion, which
were derived by assuming the rocket as a point mass
and the earth as a perfect sphere[11]. To simulated the
lift produced from the wing at first stage of the rocket
the aerodynamic model[12] of Pegasus launcher is
implemented.
By using the performance parameters determined
during the initial sizing stage, following optimization
problem is formulated for the mission and trajectory
design and optimization.
The main title (on the first page) should begin 1-3/8
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adjectives, and adverbs; do not capitalize articles,
coordinate conjunctions, or prepositions (unless the
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blank lines after the title.
Maximize payload mass
Subject to perigee altitude = 200 km
perigee velocity = 8,127 m/sec
flight path angle at perigee = 0 deg
Design variables: angle of attacks (14 design
variables)

Mission design and trajectory optimization is
performed to maximize the payload mass, while
satisfying the given mission requirements. For the
numerical optimization SQP of IMSL are employed.
Figures 4 and 5 show the optimization history. Total
292 292 292
rocket weight is 830.9 kg and the payload weight is
3.56 kg.

objective
-0.600
-0.550
-0.500
-0.450
-0.400
-0.350
-0.300
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Iterationnumber
O
b
j
e
c
t
i
v
e

Figure 4. Objective function history

-0.150
-0.100
-0.050
0.000
0.050
0.100
0.150
0.200
0.250
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7

Figure 5. Design variable history

1st Stage Ignition
t=5sec
h=11,882m
v=763.8m/sec
1st Stage Burnout
t=60sec
h=57,890m
v=3528.9m/sec
2nd Stage Ignition
t=90sec
h=89,568m
v=3433.7m/sec
Payload Fairing
Seperation
t=155sec
h=149,822m
v=5705.9m/sec
3rd Stage Ignition
t=214sec
h=191,421m
v=5637.8m/sec
2nd Stage Burnout
t=124sec
h=121,731m
v=5752.0m/sec
2nd Stage
Seperaton
t=184sec
h=172,209m
v=5669.3m/sec
3rd Stage
Burnout & Orbital
Insertion
t=241sec
h=200,138m
v=8126.1m/sec
t=0sec
h=12,000m
v=787.0m/sec

Figure 6. Optimized mission profile

3.3. Propulsion system Design

3.3.1. 1
st
Stage Hybrid Motor Design
The hybrid rocket engine, which uses a solid fuel
and a liquid oxidizer, has in- remediate characteristics
between the solid fuel and liquid propellant rocket
engines. The popular combination of the fuel and the
oxidizer is HTPB and LOX. Studies on the HTPB +
H2O2, and PE/N2O + LOX combinations are going
on. The concept of the hybrid propulsion system is
described at Fig. 7. The liquid oxidizer is pumped into
the combustion chamber by the compressed gas. The
valve located between the liquid oxidizer tank and the
combustion chamber can supply, shut off and control
the flow of the oxidizer, hence the ignition,
extinguishments, and thrust control of the rocket can
be possible. Specific impulse of the hybrid engines is
290 -350 sec, in-between the specific impulses of the
solid and liquid propellant rockets[13].

Figure 7. Concept of the hybrid rocket
propulsion system[14]

Based on the optimized trajectory of the rocket, first
stage hybrid rocket engine is designed [15]. Figure 8
shows the grain shape of the rocket fuel.

Figure 8. Grain geometry

Figure 9 shows the propulsion system configuration
including the motor case and the liquid oxidizer tank.
The weight of the major subsystems obtained from
the empirical equations, is summarized at Table 2.

Table 2. Mass of 1
st
stage main components
Component
Motor
case
Oxidizer
tank
Nozzle
& TVC
Structural
supports
Mass(kg) 46.99 60.76 49.88 15.76

293 293 293

Figure 9. 1st Stage hybrid propulsion system

Second and Third Stage Solid Motor Design
The grain shapes and components design of the second
and third stages of the solid motor are shown at Figs.
10 and 11.

Figure 10. 2
nd
Stage solid motor


Figure 11. 3
rd
Stage solid motor

3.3.4. Wing Design
From the trajectory analysis, the maximum lift is
estimated. The wing is design to produce the maximum
required lift by considering the safety factor of 1.15.
The design wing geometry is as follows, Wing
area=3.81 m
2
; Root chord=2.47 m; Span=2.808 m.

Figure 12. Wing profile

3.3.5. Attitude Control System
The basic hardware components of the attitude
control system of the space launcher are the inertial
measuring unit (IMU), the on-board computer, and the
driving actuator which can produce the required
control moments.
In this study, the electro-magnetic actuator is used
for the first stage fin control, and the thrust vector
control is implemented for the second stage. For the
third stage the thrust control using the spin motor is
used. Figure 13 shows the schematic attitude control
system of current study.

F- 4E Phantom
IMU
Flight Computer
- Navigation Calculation
- Guidance Calculation
-Auto Pilot
-Flight Sequencing
Air- Launching Rocket
IMU
(LN- 200S)
1st Stage FinActuator
(EMA)
2nd Stage Thrust
Vector Control
3rd Stage Spin Motor
(Thruster)
Attitude, Velocity, Positon
Deflection
Angle
Deflection
Angle
Command
V

Figure 13. Attitude control system

3.3.6. Digital Mockup Development
Digital mockup is fabricated using the CATIA V.
5.8. Figure 14 shows the part of the digital mockup of
the rocket.
294 294 294

Figure 14. Digital mockup using the CATIA

4. Conclusion and Future Works

In this study, the preliminary design of the air-
launching micro rocket was performed. Mission and
trajectory optimization was performed and the
propulsion system was designed based on the mission
design. Total rocket weight was 830.95 kg, the payload
weight was 3.56 kg. The designed propulsion system
length is 5.89 m, hence the total rocket length will not
exceed 7 m when considering the fairing length.
Therefore, the designed rocket can be installed to the
F-4E. Based on the current study, stability and control,
and subsystem design will be performed. Moreover the
system design by implementing the multidisciplinary
design and optimization (MDO) techniques will be
performed.

Acknowledgement
This study was supported by fundamental research
progress (No. R01-2006-000-107400-0) of the KOSEF
(Korea Science and Engineering Foundation) and
BK21(Brain Korea) program.

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