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The concept has also been used to extend the reentry time for vehicles returning to Earth from the Moon, which would otherwise have to shed a large amount of velocity in a short time and thereby suffer very high heating rates. The Apollo Command Module also used what is essentially a skip re-entry, as did the Soviet Zond and Chinese Chang'e 5-T1.
Projected empty weight of the HL-20 was 23,000 pounds (10 t) compared to the Space Shuttle Orbiter's empty weight of 185,000 pounds (84 t). Its cockpit, although smaller than that of the Shuttle, would exceed that of today's small corporate business jets. [6] A focus on easy maintenance would reduce the operating costs of the HL-20 PLS.
Early reentry-vehicle concepts visualized in shadowgraphs of high speed wind tunnel tests. The concept of the ablative heat shield was described as early as 1920 by Robert Goddard: "In the case of meteors, which enter the atmosphere with speeds as high as 30 miles (48 km) per second, the interior of the meteors remains cold, and the erosion is due, to a large extent, to chipping or cracking of ...
Space Shuttle Endeavour landing from orbit on STS-126, its 22nd spaceflight Reusable spacecraft are spacecraft capable of repeated launch, atmospheric reentry, and landing or splashdown. This contrasts with expendable spacecraft which are designed to be discarded after use.
Columbia (STS-3) landing on Northrop Strip at White Sands Space Harbor, 30 March 1982, flanked by two T-38 chase planes. White Sands Space Harbor at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico was an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle and was used as a backup when the runways at Edwards Air Force Base and the Kennedy Space Center were ...
The Space Shuttle (and prior program) flight controllers worked relatively brief periods: The several minutes of ascent, the few days the vehicle was in orbit, and reentry. The duration of operations for Space Shuttle flight controllers was short and time-critical. A failure on the Shuttle could leave flight controllers little time for talking ...
Simulating the exact conditions of a Space Re-entry vehicle's landing - high speed, unmanned, autonomous, precise landing from the same return path Validating the landing parameters such as the ground relative velocity, the sinking rate of landing gears and precise body rates as might be experienced by an orbital re-entry space vehicle on its ...
A reentry capsule is the portion of a space capsule which returns to Earth following a spaceflight. The shape is determined partly by aerodynamics ; a capsule is aerodynamically stable falling blunt end first, which allows only the blunt end to require a heat shield for atmospheric entry .