This open access book highlights the autonomous and intelligent flight control of future launch
vehicles for improving flight autonomy to plan ascent and descent trajectories onboard and
autonomously handle unexpected events or failures during the flight. Since the beginning of the
twenty-first century space launch activities worldwide have grown vigorously. Meanwhile
commercial launches also account for the booming trend. Unfortunately the risk of space
launches still exists and is gradually increasing in line with the rapidly rising launch
activities and commercial rockets. In the history of space launches propulsion and control
systems are the two main contributors to launch failures. With the development of information
technologies the increase of the functional density of hardware products the application of
redundant or fault-tolerant solutions and the improvement of the testability of avionics the
launch losses caused by control systems exhibit a downward trend and the failures induced by
propulsion systems become the focus of attention. Under these failures the autonomous planning
and guidance control may save the missions. This book focuses on the latest progress of
relevant projects and academic studies of autonomous guidance especially on some advanced
methods which can be potentially real-time implemented in the future control system of launch
vehicles. In Chapter 1 the prospect and technical challenges are summarized by reviewing the
development of launch vehicles. Chapters 2 to 4 mainly focus on the flight in the ascent phase
in which the autonomous guidance is mainly reflected in the online planning. Chapters 5 and 6
mainly discuss the powered descent guidance technologies. Finally since aerodynamic
uncertainties exert a significant impact on the performance of the ascent landing guidance
control systems the estimation of aerodynamic parameters which are helpful to improve flight
autonomy is discussed in Chapter 7. The book serves as a valuable reference for researchers
and engineers working on launch vehicles. It is also a timely source of information for
graduate students interested in the subject.
