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ESA's Intermediate Experimental Vehicle Milestone

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 21, 2013
Filed under

ESA’s Intermediate Experimental Vehicle Safe Splashdown, ESA
ESA’s experimental reentry vehicle passed its milestone descent and landing test on Wednesday at the Poligono Interforze Salto di Quirra off the east coast of Sardinia in Italy.
The full-scale Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) prototype was released from an altitude of 3000 m by a helicopter, falling to gain speed to mimic a space mission before parachute deployment. The parachute slowed IXV for a safe splashdown in the sea at a speed below 7 m/s.

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