Methods and tools for chemical emissions prediction for space launchers

The present work aims to investigate the methods for estimating the chemical emissions generated by space launchers. After providing an overview of the current scenario of access to space in terms of technology and propellants employed, the work is focused on reviewing the emissions estimation tools available in the literature and on bridging their inherent shortcomings by developing new formulations. As a matter of fact, the majority of the available prediction methods are semi-empirical and they require a great number of input variables, some of which may not be yet known in the early design stage. Therefore, the objective of this analysis is to develop novel emissions estimation formulations for space launchers, building from emissions estimation methods used for other categories of aerospace vehicles.