Advanced solid propellant rocket motor flight instrumentation

The limitations of one propulsion contractor in interpreting flight failures using existing static and flight test data are presented. It is shown that advancements in instrumentation and data acquisition systems are needed. Test data from static and flight tests are accumulated and data histories are created to analyze trends, identify performance differences between flight and static tests, and identify deviate or anomalous performances. The usual data sampling rates of digital data acquisition system are too slow to define events leading up to failure in both static and flight tests. Existing technologies should be adapted to develop transducers new to rocket motor instrumentation. This would include the use of magnetometers, in-situ transensors, eddy current devices, microwave horns and flash X-ray. Long range instrumentation systems would be on-board televisions, delayed flight data transmission, wide angle and penetrating transducers.