RocketPy: Combining Open-Source and Scientific Libraries to Make the Space Sector More Modern and Accessible
João Lemes Gribel Soares
Mateus Stano Junqueira
Patrick Sampaio dos Santos Brandão
In recent years we are seeing exponential growth in the space sector, with new companies emerging in it.
On top of that more people are becoming fascinated to participate in the aerospace revolution, which motivates
students and hobbyists to build more High Powered and Sounding Rockets.
However, rocketry is still a very inaccessible field, with high knowledge of entry-level and concrete terms.
To make it more accessible, people need an active community with flexible, easy-to-use, and well-documented tools.
RocketPy is a software solution created to address all those issues, solving the trajectory simulation for High-Power
rockets being built on top of SciPy and the Python Scientific Environment.
The code allows for a sophisticated 6 degrees of freedom simulation of a rocket's flight trajectory, including high
fidelity variable mass effects as well as descent under parachutes.
All of this is packaged into an architecture that facilitates complex simulations, such as multi-stage rockets,
design and trajectory optimization, and dispersion analysis.
In this work, the flexibility and usability of RocketPy are indicated in three example simulations:
a basic trajectory simulation, a dynamic stability analysis, and a Monte Carlo dispersion simulation.
The code structure and the main implemented methods are also presented.
rocketry, flight, rocket trajectory, flexibility, Monte Carlo analysis
DOI10.25080/majora-212e5952-020