Feasibility of Additional HTV Operation Requirement for Sample Returning Capability from the ISS
- Paper number
IAC-05-D2.3.03
- Author
Mr. Takane Imada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Coauthor
Mr. Hiroshi Sasaki, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Coauthor
Mr. Koji Yamanaka, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Year
2005
- Abstract
HTV is a space vehicle which JAXA is developing as one of the service vehicles to the ISS same as European ATV. Originally it was planned to deliver several cargos to the ISS and not hoped to recover something from ISS to the earth. One of the reason is that Space Shuttle is a desirable system for sample recovery requests. But the announcement of Space Shuttle retirement after the Colombia accident caused needs of sample returning by other visiting vehicles includes HTV. The ISS users require the recovery of many products conducted in JEM and other modules by microgravity experiments, such as super conductive materials, uniformly sized protein crystals, plants, and small animals even after the Shuttle retirement. JAXA started feasibility study of a new function to HTV which support the reentry capsule operation for sample return from the ISS. It should minimize the modification of original HTV design and weight/space penalty in cargo carrier, also should satisfy all of safety requirements for the ISS. This report summarizes the feasibility study and also refers the operation scenario, design modifications on HTV, and overall specification of re-entry capsule.
- Abstract document