Flight Data Analysis of Ariane launchers

The application ALEx based on Scilab (stands for «Analyse des Lanceurs en Exploitation» ) was created by the French Space Agency CNES in Paris to analyze the measurement realized during the launch of rockets (particularly Ariane 5).

Each Ariane5 has its own characteristics :

  • Payloads mass
  • Fairing height
  • Mission trajectory
  • SRB family

Thanks to ALEx, correlations can be established between launcher characteristics and measurement levels.

Challenge

The CNES gathers many fields of expertise BUT they share all common analysis practices:

  

Results

Here is an example of the use of ALEx for low frequency dynamic margin calculation

For flight 212, one accelerometer is near specification (18% margin) and another exceeds specification (-19% margin)