About ESA
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Space in Member States
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
Estonia
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Czechia
Romania
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Science & Exploration
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Enabling & Support
Making space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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Crash test dummy
Crash test dummies are used for testing spacecraft, not just cars. This example is a veteran of an ambitious past project to develop a small spaceplane.
The X-38 Crew Return Vehicle was a joint ESA-NASA plan to create a small lifting body glider, like a mini Space Shuttle, that could bring astronauts home from the International Space Station in an emergency. A series of flight tests ended in 2001 when an X-38 was dropped from a NASA B-52 aircraft at 13 715 m.
The project did not proceed further however and what is formally known as an ‘anthropomorphic test dummy’ never got a chance to fly. Instead ESA applied its experience from the X-38 programme to develop its own lifting-body glider programme. The uncrewed Intermediate Experimental Vehicle IXV proved the concept in 2015, when it was launched atop a Vega launcher then recovered after controlled flight to a Pacific Ocean splashdown.
ESA’s IXV experience in turn has been applied to the reusable Space Rider spaceplane, set to make its first launch next year.
The ATD is part of the first selection of items on the 99 Objects of ESA ESTEC website, a set of intriguing, often surprising artefacts helping tell the story of more than half a century of activity at ESA’s technical heart.
