ESA IXV

Engineers at European Space Agency (ESA) are moving ahead with the final trials on the itermediate experimental vehicle (IXV) to validate its survival capabilities in demanding conditions after its launch on-board a Vega rocket in November.

At the ESA’s Technical Centre in Noordwijk, Netherlands, the spaceplane will undergo shake and separation shock tests, and lastly testing the onboard subsystems’ functionality.

The IXV launch is first of its kind for Europe and is aimed at testing the technologies and critical systems for the continent’s future automated re-entry vehicles coming back from low-orbit.

ESA’s IXV project manager Giorgio Tumino said: "In this mission, we are not only monitoring the spacecraft all along its autonomous flight, but also tracking its progress back to Earth to a particular spot, this is different to what we are used to."

"We are not only monitoring the spacecraft all along its autonomous flight, but also tracking its progress back to Earth to a particular spot."

Upon being launched on a suborbital trajectory, the spaceplane will reach an altitude of 450km and then re-enter the atmosphere at a speed of 7.5km/s, harmonising the speed of a re-entry from low Earth orbit (LEO).

The spaceplane will then gather information during both hypersonic and supersonic flight, while being managed by flaps and thrusters.

In addition, the obtained information can be used by research and industrial community for advancement in atmospheric re-entry, oriented to transportation systems with applications in exploration, science, Earth observation, microgravity and clean space.

Weighing almost 2t, IXV integrates highly advanced thermal structures including thrusters and flaps that form part of the control system, in addition to the 300 sensors and infrared camera to record the heating down the length of the spacecraft from the nose to the flaps.

Image: Artist impression of ESA’s IXV. Photo: courtesy of ESA – J Huart.

Defence Technology