Abstract: As a new vertical take-off and landing manned spacecraft, Starship adopts a new type of control surface. Two groups of wings separately mounted in the front and rear of the body that can be deflected along the axis direction are used to control the body movement. The aerodynamic characteristics of the Starship control surface are studied through numerical simulation. The influence of the control surface deflection on the lift, the drag and the triaxial torque is systematically investigated. At a small angle of attack, the rear wings are the main lift surface, with an almost linear relation between the deflected angle and the lift coefficient. The influence of the front wing deflection on the drag coefficient is more significant, and the relation between the deflected angle of the front wings and the drag coefficient is also linear. The deflection of the rear wings could affect the pitching moment, the rolling moment, and the yawing moment. The correlations between the deflection of the rear wings and the pitching moment coefficient and the rolling moment coefficient are almost linear. The deflection of the front wings almost only affects the yawing moment. At a large angle of attack, particularly when the attack angle is larger than 90°, the traditional flaperon control mode is basically ineffective. However, a strong relation between the triaxial moment coefficient and the deflection angle of the front and rear wings for the new control mode still exist. Therefore, Starship could still control the triaxial motion by deflecting both sides of the front and rear wings.

Key words: Starship, new control surface, aerodynamic characteristics, landing, large separation