Plenty of European astronauts and hardware have gone up
to the space station or to other orbits around Earth, but now the European
Space Agency (ESA) is thinking of ways to get them back down on their own.
A Vega rocket on the drawing boards is slated to carry
ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) into space in 2012. The stubby
white-and-black spacecraft is designed to use two rear flaps in a paddling
motion to steer itself during atmospheric reentry.
Such a demonstration craft could perhaps pave the way for
Europe to return its astronauts to Earth without relying on the U.S. or Russian
space programs. The U.S. itself faces a four-year gap in manned spaceflight
capability after the space shuttle retires in 2010, and will have to rely on
the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
"With ATV [Automated Transfer Vehicle] and Columbus,
the European space laboratory, we believe Europe has now become one of the
major players in manned space exploration," said John Ellwood, ATV mission
manager. He added that the European Union's Council of Ministers would meet in
November to set space policy for the next several years.
Europe's ATV currently serves as an unmanned space delivery
vehicle, with the first, named Jules Verne, successfully completing its mission
and undergoing
a fiery death in the Earth's atmosphere. But now ESA wants to push forward
with developing an ATV variant that could undergo re-entry and safely return
cargo or astronauts.
"ESA does not plan to develop a reusable re-entry
system on the basis of the ATV, but rather an expendable re-entry vehicle,"
said Marco Caporicci, head of transport and re-entry systems for the ESA Human
Spaceflight Directorate.
The Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (ARV) would use Europe's
Ariane 5 rocket, which is not reusable. An expendable service module would
boost the ARV into orbit and guide the re-entry module to reenter Earth's
atmosphere.
ESA has not tried to develop a reusable launch system or
service module because of the low number of European spaceflights, Caporicci
said. But the re-entry capsule would conceptually resemble NASA's Apollo or
upcoming Orion capsules, with some changes.
"We believe that the shape selected, with a cone
angle of 20 degrees, would allow more internal volume than for the classical
Apollo shape," Caporicci told SPACE.com.
Caporicci cautioned that "ARV does not play a role
in closing the gap between Shuttle
and Orion," and that the IXV and ARV programs would each follow their
own separate development tracks.
However, space enthusiasts can cheer the notion that
Europe may someday join the United States, Russia and China in launching
astronauts and returning them safely to Earth.
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