ESA To Develop Experimental Craft For Spacecraft Return
The European Space Agency has inked an agreement to develop a new vehicle that will better methods of safely returning spacecrafts back to Earth.
EXPERT, or EXPERimental Re-entry Test-bed, is a 1.5m-long, cone shaped vehicle. The ESA intends to launch EXPERT via submarine missile.
EXPERT will be designed with sensors to acquire data while soaring to 105km before being gently guided back to Earth by parachute.
The experimental craft will be equipped with about 15 instruments that will analyze aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic phenomena while traveling at a rate of 5km per second according to BBC News.
The data collected by EXPERT will likely be utilized for future development of the space agency’s Advanced Re-Entry Vehicle (ARV).
"It is entirely designed not to resemble a final operational system but to generate the aerodynamic and physical phenomena we want to investigate," Marco Caporicci, who leads the transportation and re-entry division in ESA’s human spaceflight directorate, told BBC News.
"This is a step towards the validation of the design tools, both computational flight dynamics and wind tunnels; and then [we can] use those tools for the actual conditions of re-entry of the operational missions, first of all the ARV."
Earlier this month, the ESA announced plans to begin development of the ARV initially as an unmanned spacecraft that will allow for payload delivery to and from the International Space Station and Earth.
The space agency also mentioned plans for further developments that would see the ARV become a vessel to carry astronauts into space.
The ARV will improve on the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) space vehicle technology by allowing for the capability to perform a controlled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
ATV vehicles are carried into space by Ariane 5 ES launch vehicles. The first ATV craft was sent to the ISS in 2008. It features robotic technology that allows it to find its way to be docked with the orbiting outpost without the use of human guidance.
However, the ATV does not feature technology that allows it to make a safe return to Earth through the atmosphere. Scientists hope to make this possible with the development of the ARV.
The unmanned variant, slated to launch as soon as 2016, would be the most likely to see time in space. Meanwhile, the successes of the unmanned craft would determine the system’s use for sending astronauts into orbit, possibly by 2025.
According to the BBC, Italy’s Thales Alenia Space has agreed to a deal with ESA to develop the flight model of EXPERT at a total cost of 30m euros, or about $42.5m. About 15m of the total cost will be designated for payload experiments.
The ESA expects to launch the experimental craft from the Pacific Ocean via Russian Volna rocket during the second half of 2010.
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Image Caption: Illustration showing Expert during reentry Credits: ESA
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