Flight testing of parachute recovery systems aboard REXUS

The Supersonic Parachute Experiment Aboard REXUS or SPEAR mission is a mission by the Parachute Research Group (PRG)of Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE). Theprimaryobjective is to test the in-house developed Hemisflo ribbon drogue parachute at supersonic conditions. To achieve this a test vehicle is placed in the nose cone of the REXUS sounding rocket and released nearapogee(75-85km). From apogee, the test vehicle shall follow a ballistic trajectory and deploy the drogue parachute above Mach 1.5.Besides testing the drogue parachute at supersonic velocities, the secondary goal of the mission is to gather a full validation data set for the DARE ParSim and TumSim simulation tools.The test vehicle is aerodynamically stabilized and centredaround the drogue parachute deployment system. The parachute system is completedby two main parachutes for a safe landing. Data on the parachute performance is stored onboard. All mission critical data, including video, is sent down via telemetry.Thepaperdescribesthe SPEAR project, design and testing envelope.Furthermore, an outlook is provided on diverse experiment possibilities for parachute testing on the REXUS soundingrocket.