A stratospheric drop test of Italian aerospace centre CIRA’s unmanned space vehicle (USV) has been delayed to June-August because of the Sardinian government’s opposition to the upgrading of a military base from which the USV was to be launched.
The 65,600ft (20,000m) drop was to have taken place off the Mediterranean island’s coast in January, but will now occur over Italian space agency ASI’s stratospheric balloon launch base in Sicily.
The 1,250kg (2,750lb) USV is an 8m-long supersonic flying laboratory with a 3.5m wingspan. The mid-year flight will be the first of four balloon drops. Each will see an increase in velocity from Mach 1 up to about M2, with a recoverable water landing.
“Unfortunately we got a stop from the Sardinian local government. We are now working for the first dropped transonic flight-test launch using the summer launch window from the ASI launch base in Sicily,” says CIRA’s head of space programmes, Gennaro Russo. “The [USV] roll-out is now fixed for 10 March.”
The programme of four flights and construction of two USV vehicles is costing €31 million ($38 million). The vehicles are being built under CIRA’s guidance by Carlo Gavazzi Space, Space Software Italia, Techno Systems Developments and Vitrociset. The vehicles each carry 500 experimental sensors.
The USV is Italy’s candidate reusable launch vehicle demonstrator for the European Space Agency’s Future Launcher Preparatory Programme. It would be superseded by the Unmanned Space Vehicle-Experimental (USV-X) re-entry vehicle, which could fly in 2010.
The USV-X will be launched on a suborbital trajectory by ESA’s Vega launcher or an Indian booster.
Source: Flight International
