Influence of the Earth Rotation on Trajectory of a Returnable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle

It is of high difficulty for a hypersonic vehicle to implement a hypersonic cruise flight and return to a scheduled airport without power. Accuracy of mission simulation and analysis is more crucial at this time. Under this circumstance, it is meaningful to discuss whether the earth rotation should be considered in the dynamic model and trajectory design. In this research, the dynamic equations in which the earth rotation is taken into consideration are derived for a hypersonic cruise vehicle. The direct shooting method is utilized for parameterization and discretization of the trajectory, so that the trajectory can be analyzed and simulated through numerical integration. Then, two groups of trajectory simulation results are presented. In each group, the only difference between the two trajectories is that whether the earth rotation is involved, and the two trajectories are compared with each other. For a returnable hypersonic cruise vehicle which returns to the ground without power, whether to involve the earth rotation in the dynamic model is discussed on the basis of the numerical results, and relevant suggestions are given for reference.