Supersonic Parachute Testing Using a MAXUS Sounding Rocket Piggy-Back Payload

A feasibility study has been performed under European Space Agency funding to produce a preliminary design of a re-entry vehicle that can be used as a test bed for supersonic parachutes. An opportunity in 2016 has been identified that would allow the vehicle to be launched aboard a MAXUS sounding rocket from the Swedish Space Corporation’s facility, Esrange, in Kiruna, Sweden. Supersonic tests in large wind tunnel facilities are costly. Moreover, since the mothballing of the AEDC 16S facility, parachute testing has been limited, by tunnel blockage, to articles with diameters <0.83 m or to modest Mach numbers. Full-scale supersonic parachute testing is also expensive, of the order of tens of millions of Euros for a series of tests. Therefore, a test technique that allows representative supersonic testing of parachutes at modest cost is required. The preliminary design MAXUS piggyback capsule capable of allowing such testing is presented here.