Development and Flight Testing of Energy Management Algorithms for Small-Scale Sounding Rockets

Salt Lake Community College Student Center

The development, implementation, and ight results for a navigation algorithm and an energy management system are presented. The navigation algorithm employs both a Kalman lter and an inertial navigation routine. The energy management system includes an asymptotic targeting algorithm and pneumatically deployed air brakes that deplete excess energy from the rocket in ight. These algorithms were developed to ful ll objectives in the NASA USLI competition. The energy management algorithm has been shown to successfully target an apogee altitude on two separate test ights.