Team preparing the plasma wind tunnel at the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA) in Capua, Italy.
The drop-test model was built in Craiova, Romania, at Romania’s National Institute for Aerospace Research ‘Elie Carafoli’ (INCAS) before being shipped to CIRA. CIRA is responsible for the design, integration, and implementation of the drop test.
Space Rider is ESA’s reuseable spacecraft in development. It will be about the size of two minivans and will allow for many kinds of missions, ranging from pharmaceutical research to in-orbit manufacturing, visiting orbital platforms and more. After staying in Earth orbit for up to three months, Space Rider will return through our atmosphere to precision-land on skids after a paraglider descent.
Spacecraft that return to Earth – such as Space Rider – have to protect themselves from these intense temperatures, and Space Rider uses reusable ceramic tiles on its belly and nose to insulate from the heat.
The Space Rider reentry module has two flaps to steer the spacecraft during reentry, weighing just 10 kg and at just 90 x 70 cm they steer the 3000 kg module as it flies into Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. To test the flaps as if they were in flight, CIRA subjected them to their plasma wind tunnel, the world’s largest. The flaps were hit with an arc jet of gas bombarding them at ten times the speed of sound.