| | End-to-end European transportation capability: The Advanced Re-entry Vehicle
Mission scenario of the Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (ARV)
Europe has recently demonstrated its capability and willingness to provide essential logistics support to the ISS though the first flight of the Automated Transfer Vehicle. The very successful Jules Verne mission has demonstrated several new technologies and capabilities that can be utilised and adapted in the future for developing new spacecraft, such as automatic rendezvous between flying spacecraft, crucial for future human planetary exploration, complex space infrastructure assembly and robotic sample-return missions.
Autonomous access
In doing so, Europe has significantly expanded upon its previous achievements, which have secured its autonomous access to space and a prominent role in the frame of cooperative endeavours with other space-faring nations. The ISS is presently the most visible example of such cooperative endeavours, but other initiatives are being considered in the field of exploration, in which ESA Member States have strong interests.
The ISS also provides for a timely test-bed of technologies and programmatics for the future implementation of global exploration initiatives. An appropriate exploitation of its capabilities appears therefore as the first natural step towards securing a future European role in the context of exploration, on the basis of its demonstrated technologies.
ISS logistics
With the Space Shuttle retirement announced by NASA, it is necessary to reconsider essential aspects of the ISS exploitation on the basis of the traffic models enabled by the available or planned transportation means to and from low Earth orbit. Notably, the ISS partners will be deprived of the capability to return conditioned payloads and equipment to Earth (including samples resulting from ISS experiments).
With this ISS logistic situation, the significant European space transportation background (patiently built through decades of activities) provides the opportunity to deploy an operational system. The obvious intrinsic strategic benefits of such a capability are magnified by the possibility to effectively leverage the enhanced support in the frame of the ISS exploitation, for the benefit of all partners.
Cargo re-entry capsule
Possible future development of a crew transportation system
The ATV currently has a capability to re-supply the ISS with up to 7.5 tonnes of propellants and cargo, and is the largest orbiting space vehicle after the US Space Shuttle. In the new scenario the pressurised Integrated Cargo Carrier would be replaced by a cargo re-entry capsule, equipped with a heat shield and able to bring back hundreds of kilograms of cargo and valuable experiments. Such a project, named the Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (ARV), would use heritage from the Atmospheric Re-entry Demonstrator (ARD), which flew successfully in 1998, as well as the work done in the definition of past space transportation system concepts.
Finally, the possible future development of a crew transportation system hinges on extensive preliminary testing though the successful execution of several automated flights. The ISS provides a natural operational frame for conducting such flights.
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