EXPERT: the early opportunity for re-entry system technologies and tools validation
- Paper number
IAC-06-D2.5.04
- Author
Mr. Federico Massobrio, Thales Alenia Space, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Marco Caporicci, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Dr. Giuliano Marino, CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Centre, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Roberto Viotto, Thales Alenia Space, Italy
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The ESA project EXPERT (European eXPErimental Re-entry Testbed), presently bridging towards C/D phase, is a low-cost ballistic flight re-entry testbed aimed at validation of system technologies, aerothermodynamics models, codes and ground facilities in a representative flight environment, to improve the understanding of issues related to analysis, testing and extrapolation to flight of the associated phenomena. EXPERT will also provide important information at system level for vehicles re-entering nose-first in the atmosphere. This is an important requirement for future operational vehicles due to the limitation in the re-entry shield size driven by the launcher fairing diameter. One major consequence of the technical goals of the mission requirements has been the challenge to manage a hybrid configuration of promising non-ablative thermal protections to avoid contamination of the flow boundary layer by chemical species and solid particles. This leads to the choice of thermal protection materials, which are not expected to undergo degradation during the flight and therefore would be candidate for reusable thermal protection applications (although no actual data on extended reusability will be obtained from one single flight). Mastering of elements such as Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC), metallic load carrying hot structures, stabilizing surfaces, cavities, gaps and sealing as well as related thermo-mechanical deformations and interfaces, become key issues where the future transportation and re-entry vehicles challenge will be played. Special care has been placed on the location and number of measurement sensors, the recording of the free stream parameters during re-entry using an appropriate Air Data System and in the safe data storage on-board of the performed measurements. Innovative and promising measurement techniques candidate for utilisation in-flight are being assessed, as they may enhance the quality of the obtained flight database. The retained vehicle architecture consists of a blunt nose re-entry capsule, launched by the Russian submarine-based VOLNA sub-orbital launcher. EXPERT is designed for sub-orbital flights with a re-entry velocity of around 5 km/s due to material limit. The foreseen landing site is the Russian military base in the Kamchatka peninsula. The mission, currently planned for 2008, is expected to provide for important flight input data in time for future operational re-entry vehicles.
- Abstract document