Advanced Rocket Trajectory Propagation Techniques

Reservoir Labs and Johns Hopkins University will develop alternative numerical solution techniques that improve computational loading, data storage, and data integrity for rocket vehicle trajectory modeling in MDA federated simulations.The objective of this program is to develop new techniques for trajectory propagation that are more suited for use in federated simulations than traditional methods.Runge-Kutta methods have been the standard for numerically solving a system of differential equations to propagate rocket vehicle trajectories. While these methods are robust and have well characterized errors, Runge-Kutta methods have limitations for high-resolution federated simulations. These limitations include extensive computational throughput requirements and large output data sets. Other limitations include the need to perform time-step matching between component simulations, and to determine the states for federated simulation events between the calculated time-steps.Our approach helps mitigate all of these difficulties with traditional missile trajectory representations based on time-stepped position and orientation data.Approved for Public Release | 18-MDA-9522 (23 Feb 18)