WASHINGTON — German startup Atmos Space Cargo says it considers the first flight of its reentry vehicle a success despite limited data on how it performed during reentry.
Atmos Space Cargo flew its first Phoenix vehicle as one of the payloads on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission April 21. The vehicle separated from the upper stage about 90 minutes after liftoff and, roughly a half-hour later, began reentry for a splashdown in the South Atlantic Ocean about 2,000 kilometers off the coast of Brazil.
The mission had three major goals, Sebastian Klaus, chief executive of Atmos, said during an April 22 briefing. One was to collect data from the spacecraft itself in flight, while a second was to operate and return data from payloads in the spacecraft. The third was to collect data on the performance of the spacecraft’s inflatable heat shield during reentry.
“What is confirmed is that we got a lot of flight data,” he said. The four payloads on board, from commercial customers and the German aerospace agency DLR, all turned on and returned data. “We can call that a full success.”
What is less certain is how the spacecraft, including its heat shield, performed during reentry. Atmos had planned for a reentry in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, near the island of Réunion. Klaus said the company spent half a year making plans for a reentry there, including ships to recover the spacecraft after splashdown and aircraft to collect data during reentry.
However, five weeks before the launch, SpaceX informed Atmos of a change in trajectory because of “operational constraints” of the primary payload, a South Korean reconnaissance satellite. That resulted in a splashdown well off the coast of Brazil, ruling out any attempt to recover Phoenix after splashdown. It also meant a steeper reentry than previously planned, creating higher loads on the spacecraft.
The company lined up new ground stations in South America to communicate with the spacecraft during key phases of flight leading up to reentry. In addition, it chartered a plane to attempt to collect data during reentry, but the splashdown location was beyond the range of the aircraft. That distance, along with cloud cover, prevented the company from getting imagery of the reentry.
Klaus said Atmos considered that third milestone “partly successful” for now as it continues to analyze the data from the flight. Some data suggests that the heat shield inflated as planned, but he said the company needed more time to analyze the data it had, adding that it was “very difficult” to get data from Phoenix in the final phases of its flight given its distance from ground stations.
The data it did collect will help the company with its second Phoenix reentry vehicle, which it plans to launch next year. “It would be much better to have more data on the critical last phase of the flight,” Klaus said. “But then on the other side, there’s a lot we have learned about all other systems and operational aspects.”
“All in all, I would say, it’s a very successful mission,” he concluded.
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