Abort recovery strategy for future vertical landing systems

The abort recovery strategy applied to future vertical landing systems with multiple engines are composed of two approaches. First is to shutdown the counter engine of the failed engine in order to minimize the attitude perturbation. And the second, which is the key approach, is applying a nonlinear control law. Such an approach has the robustness to the large attitude motion, and also to the variation in weight, moment of inertia and center of gravity. The control law applied has been developed under the collaboration with Nagoya University. To demonstrate the above mentioned strategy, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is preparing flight test by a subscale demonstrator called “OEEX”, which stands for “One Engine inoperative EXperimental vehicle”. The results of application of such strategy are described. Also, the status of the OEEX is presented.