NEW YORK: Back on Earth after a whirlwind journey 20,000 miles around the world, an experimental re-entry demonstrator is on the way to Europe for post-flight inspections aimed at gathering design inputs for future reusable space vehicles.
The spacecraft splashed down in the equatorial Pacific Ocean west of the Galapagos Islands after a 100-minute test flight. Four airbags inflated to keep the space plane from sinking as divers deployed from an Italian recovery vessel in Zodiac boats speeding toward the splashdown site.
A few hours later, a crane on the Nos Aries ship lifted the 16-foot-long (5-meter) Intermediate Experimental Vehicle from the ocean and placed it on the vessel’s deck.
The IXV launched from the European-run spaceport in French Guiana aboard a Vega rocket at 1340 GMT (8:40 a.m. EST) and reached a maximum altitude of 256 miles (413 kilometers) before descending back into Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 16,800 mph (7.5 kilometers per second), using four rear-mounted rocket thrusters and two maneuvering flaps to steer toward its target landing zone.
Officials said the craft had a nearly on-target splashdown after using aerodynamic resistance, S-turn banking maneuvers and a series of parachutes to slow from hypersonic speed to a gentle landing velocity of about 15 mph (7 meters per second).
Technicians clad in protective hazardous material suits from the European Space Agency and Thales Alenia Space, which built the IXV re-entry demonstrator, planned to decontaminate the spacecraft’s hydrazine fuel tank after the recovery operation.
The Nos Aries is sailing back to port in Genoa, Italy, where it is due to arrive in March. The IXV will be transported from Genoa to an ESA test center in the Netherlands, where engineers will disassemble the spacecraft and see how it weathered the brief test flight.
The ship will traverse the Panama Canal, where it will drop off most of the recovery team to fly back to Europe.
Before it splashed down, the IXV radioed recorded data from more than 300 sensors on the spacecraft to an antenna on the Nos Aries ship. With the successful recovery of the spacecraft, engineers can physically examine its condition.
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