Europe is all set to launch its mini 'spaceplane' demonstrator. The unmanned Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) will launch atop a Vega rocket from South America, fly east around the globe, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Read more
IXV, Europe's Intermediate Experimental Vehicle, will soon be launched by Vega into a suborbital path. As it reenters the atmosphere, IXV will test new critical technologies to advance Europe's ambition to return autonomously from space. Read more
ESA's unmanned spaceplane, IXV, was lifted onto the payload adapter on 26 January 2015 at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The adapter will be used to fix IXV to the Vega rocket. Read more
The Vega launch of ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, due on 18 November from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, has been postponed to allow for additional analyses of the Vega flight trajectory. For this mission, instead of heading north into a polar orbit, as on previous flights, Vega will head eastwards to release the spaceplane into a suborbital path reaching all the way to the Pacific Ocean to test new technologies for future autonomous controlled reentry for return missions. Read more
The launch of ESA's IXV Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle on Europe's new Vega rocket is now in detailed planning, a major step towards the craft's flight in 2014. Launched into a suborbital trajectory from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, IXV will return to Earth as if from a low-orbit mission, to test and qualify new critical technologies for future reentry vehicles. Read more
A spacecraft control flap designed for the super-heated hypersonic fall through Earth's atmosphere has come through testing in the world's largest plasma wind tunnel to be ready for its first flight next year. This flap and its advanced sensors are destined to fly on ESA's Expert - the European Experimental Reentry Testbed - a blunt-nosed capsule being shot up to the edge of space next spring on a Russian Volna rocket to gather data on atmospheric reentry at 5 km/s. Read more
A contract has been signed at the Paris air show that will lead to the development of a remarkable spacecraft to test re-entry technologies. Thales Alenia Space in Italy has been given the authorisation to build the wedge-shaped Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV). The European Space Agency (Esa) demonstrator will be launched in 2012.
In 2012, Vega will carry ESAs Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle into space. The vehicle will then return to Earth to test a range of enabling systems and technologies for atmospheric re-entry. A new video with computer generated animations of the vehicle and its mission is now available. Part of ESAs Future Launchers Preparatory Programme has been devoted to optimising a long-term European roadmap for in-flight experimentation with atmospheric re-entry enabling systems and technologies. The Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) project is the next core step of this effort.