A reentry corridor calculation method for reusable Launch Vehicles based on skipping trajectory

A new method to calculate the corridor of Reentry Launch Vehicles is proposed, based on their dynamic properties. The upper boundary of the corridor can be calculated by the skipping trajectories from the lower boundary of the corridor. By combination with a specific kinematic equations and a numerical simulation, the reliability and optimality of the method is analyzed. The results also show that the traditional reentry corridor estimated by quasi-equilibrium gliding conditions has its conservativeness, the reentry corridor that the new method calculated can better reflect the RLV´s maneuvers abilities. Moreover, compared to the general methods, the direct and indirect methods to calculate the corridor, which are usually used to solve optimization problems, the proposed method has a smaller amount of calculation, shorter calculation time, stronger convergence, thus has stronger practicability.