The paper deals with the hypersonicaerodynamic analysis of three reusable andunmanned flying laboratories designed toperform a return flight from low Earth orbit toprovide experimental data in the framework ofre-entry technologies. Several designapproaches, ranging from low-order methods tocomputational fluid dynamics analyses, havebeen addressed in this work. In particular,vehicles aerodynamic performances for a widerange of free stream flow conditions, includingreacting and non-reacting flow and differentangles of attack, have been provided and insome cases compared. Computational fluiddynamics results confirm that real gas effectsseem to be fundamental for the assessment ofthe concept aerodynamics, especiallyconcerning pitching moment evaluation.
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