Recovery Method for Unmanned Hypersonic Test Vehicles

ACENT Laboratories LLC has a strong history in the area of hypersonic flight testing and understands that recovery of entire flight test vehicles and/or components for post-test inspection and analysis are increasingly important for future hypersonic technology and vehicle development efforts. Under this Phase I SBIR effort ACENT has built on our flight test legacy to develop several innovative approaches for recovery of hypersonic flight vehicles, their critical components, and/or physical data. These include an innovative mid-air recovery method for hypersonic vehicles, as well as several methods to actively or passively decelerate and recover critical components or physical data from unmanned hypersonic vehicles that remove hypersonic aerothermal loading within seconds and quickly decelerate to low terminal velocities.