Europe Launches a Mini Space Plane, IXV
First of all, what is a Space Plane?
A space plane is a vehicle that is able to operate like an aircraft and a spacecraft, so basically it can fly in the Earth’s atmosphere as well as in space.
What is IXV?
It is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) unmanned Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, which has the ability to decelerate from hypersonic speed, which is 5 times the speed of sound (Mach 5), to supersonic speed, which is a speed over the speed of sound (Mach 1). It is 5 meters long and weighs just under 2 tones. The IXV also includes over 300 advanced sensors that are able to record very important data, which will be analyzed by the ESA.
What happened with the launching of IXV?
It was launched on February 11th 2015 at 13:40 GMT in Kourou, French Guiana, a country bordering northern Brazil. The IXV was attached to a Vega rocket and detached at an altitude of 340 km and then continued up and reached the height of 412 km. It had a successful reentry, which has been described as “flawless” by the ESA, in the Earth’s atmosphere and landed in the Pacific Ocean just west of the Galapagos Islands. The reentry speed was 7.5 km/s at an altitude of 120 km and in total the mission, from launch to splashdown, lasted 100 minutes. The 2-tone space plane used a parachute to complete the decent into the Pacific and was kept afloat by balloons after which it was picked up by the “Nos Aries” ship and brought back to the ESA’S Technical center in the Netherlands for further examination.
Why is this mission so important?
As Giorgio Tumino, the IXV’s project manager said, “this was a short mission with big impact.” This suborbital mission has opened the door to developing a vehicle that is able to reenter in the earth’s atmosphere without being destroyed and which can then be reused. As Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, has explicated, “IXV has opened a new chapter for ESA in terms of reentry capabilities and reusability.” The ESA has stated that initial results are projected to be announced about 6 weeks after the launch.