Entry Vehicle Demonstrator

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The Earth re-entry Vehicle Demonstrator ( EVD ) is an unmanned experimental spaceship as part of the ESA Aurora project to explore the solar system. In order to better analyze the samples that were collected by robotics on other planets, they have to be brought to Earth.

The aim of this demonstrator is to test re-entry into the earth's atmosphere for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission (return of samples from Mars to Earth). For this purpose, a small vehicle (or capsule) is brought into an elliptical orbit around the earth and then accelerated towards earth to simulate the circumstances after a return from Mars. At the ESA conference in December 2005, 14 of the 17 member states only confirmed their participation in the ExoMars mission , which means that the start of the Entry Vehicle Demonstrator Mission will probably be postponed or this project will be completely canceled. A similar project was already the ARD , which was successfully started on October 21, 1998. However, the objective was the possible development of a European team capsule.

literature

  • Andy Phipps, Alex da Silva Curiel, Martin Sweeting, Arthur Smith, Steve Lingard: A high-energy sample return Earth re-entry demonstrator to address planetary protection issues . In: Acta Astronautica . tape 61 , no. 1-6 , June 2007, pp. 198–202 , doi : 10.1016 / j.actaastro.2007.01.015 .