EADS Launch Vehicles division is planning a demonstration flight to simulate the aerocapture manoeuvre for future French space agency CNES/NASA Mars sample return missions. The flight into the Earth's atmosphere in 2007 would use the European Space Agency's Atmospheric Re-entry Vehicle Demonstrator (ARD), launched on a Starsem Soyuz ST-Fregat booster. It would enter a 10,500km (6,500miles) by 27,000km Earth orbit and make an apogee manoeuvre to reduce perigee to 60km for the aerocapture simulation, skipping off the Earth's atmosphere at 10km/s to reduce the apogee to 1,100km.
Source: Flight International
