Boost-glide trajectories are a class of spacecraft guidance and reentry trajectories that extend the range of suborbital spaceplanes and reentry vehicles by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. In most examples, boost-glide roughly doubles the range over the purely ballistic trajectory. In others, a series of skips allows range to be further extended, and leads to the alternate terms skip-glide and skip reentry.
The concept was first seriously studied as a way to extend the range of ballistic missiles, but was not used operationally in this form as conventional missiles with extended range were introduced. The underlying aerodynamic concepts have been used to produce maneuverable reentry vehicles, or MARV, to increase the accuracy of some missiles like the Pershing II or to avoid interception as in the case of the Avangard. More recently, the range-extension has been used as a way to allow flights at lower altitudes, helping avoid radar detection for a longer time compared to a higher ballistic path.
The concept has also been used to extend the reentry time for vehicles returning to Earth from the Moon, which would otherwise have to shed a large amount of velocity in a short time and thereby suffer very high heating rates. The Apollo Command Module used what is essentially a one-skip reentry (or partial skip), as did the Soviet Zond and Chinese Chang'e 5-T1. More complex multi-skip reentry is proposed for newer vehicles like the Orion spacecraft.
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