Hiroto HABU

On February 3, 2018 at the JAXA Uchinoura Space Center, JAXA experimented SS-520 No. 5 launch with a 3U sized cube sat called TRICOM-1R aboard. After liftoff, flight of SS-520 No. 5 proceeded normally. Around 7 minutes 30 seconds into flight, TRICOM-1R separated and was inserted into its target orbit. And the launcher became the world's smallest class satellite launcher. SS-520 launch vehicle is one of sounding rockets operated in JAXA/ISAS, and originally two stage rocket. In this experiment, to make this vehicle put a satellite into orbit, the third stage motor is added. And this sounding rocket has four tail fins for spin stabilization, but usually don't have an attitude control system during the flight. But in this mission, it is needed to control its attitude to ignite second and third motor toward horizontal after first stage bum-out. The gas jet system is installed into between the first stage and the second stage of the vehicle as a unique active attitude control system. The gas jet system can control the spin axis direction and the spin rate of the vehicle during the coasting fight. Because of this constraint, the apogee altitude after the burn out of the first stage motor almost correspond with the perigee altitude of the elliptical orbit. In this mission, the sounding rocket-based Nano launcher is planned to put TRICOM-1R into the elliptical orbit. Its targeted apogee altitude is about 1,800 km and its perigee altitude is about 180 km. Because the perigee altitude is relatively low, the orbit life is very short. One of the mission requirements is to make the vehicle an orbit insertion with more than 30 days orbital lifetime. The vehicle error or the environment error deeply affect the achieved trajectory. These errors must be small enough to put TRICOM-1R into orbit. This paper discusses about the trajectory design on how to manage the sounding rocket into a satellite launching vehicle, the effect of the orbital distribution depending on the various errors, the flight safety analysis, and finally flight performance evaluation.

<p>We have been developing a peristaltic mixer simulating the intestines to realize safe and continuous solid propellant mixing and transport. In this report, we propose quantitative packing mixed transportation of mixed materials in order to avoid cleaning the inside of the device, to avoid mixing of air bubbles into the material, and to improve the quantitative control of mixed materials. Specifically, a mixing experiment was conducted with the mixture in a bag. Based on the experimental results, we believe that mixing is possible even if the material is packed.</p>

<p>In recent years, the demand for rocket launching has increased due to the development of space technology. However, using inexpensive rockets is not always possible. Although the cost of solid-propellant rockets is relatively reasonable, safely manufacturing a large amount of solid propellant is difficult, and the manufacturing process is disjointed. Therefore, to achieve safe and continues manufacturing of solid propellant, we have developed the peristaltic mixing conveyor with pneumatic artificial muscle. In Dec.2017, we succeed manufacturing of the over 1kg practical composition propellant by our system, and in Feb.2018, we succeed burning test of it on ground.</p>