Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator

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The Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator ( ARD ) is an unmanned spacecraft that was created as a study for the development of a European crew capsule for transport to the International Space Station (ISS). It looks like an Apollo command capsule.

The capsule was made by Aérospatiale , is 2.4 m high and 2.8 m in diameter. This is 50 percent of the dimensions that the Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator astronaut capsule will later have. Their exterior is made of aluminum . The heat shield , which is made of Aleastrasil , is located on the wide base plate of the capsule . The flight control system and the electrical system are based on technology developed for Ariane 5 . The position control system with seven hydrazine nozzles comes from the German DASA . It is used to align the capsule with the heat shield before entering the atmosphere.

The first and so far only launch of the ARD was a suborbital test flight. It took place on October 21, 1998 from the Center Spatial Guyanais in Kourou using an Ariane 5 . At an altitude of 216 km, the ARD separated from the launcher twelve minutes after the launch and continued to climb to a maximum altitude of 830 km. During the flight around 200 technical parameters were recorded and sent to the ground station. Upon re-entry , temperatures of up to 900 ° C occurred on the heat shield, but the interior of the landing capsule remained airtight and intact at all times. 101 minutes after the start, the ARD watered 4.9 km from the targeted destination in the Pacific Ocean between the Marquesas and Hawaii . Five hours later, the capsule was recovered and taken to Europe for further investigation. The ARD had met all requirements.

The ARD is exhibited in the Cité de l'espace in Toulouse .

A follow-up project to ARD is the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle , which was launched for the first time on February 11, 2015 with the Vega launcher.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ariane-5 Completes Flawless Third Test Flight. (PDF) ESA, November 1998, accessed on April 6, 2015 .

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