Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle

The Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) is an European Space Agency (ESA) experimental suborbital re-entry vehicle (spaceplane prototype) to validate European reusable launchers, evaluated in the frame of the Future Launchers Preparatory Programme (FLPP), and developed under the leadership of the NGL Prime SpA company. The IXV successfully completed its 100-minute mission on 11 February 2015 being the first ever lifting body to perform full atmospheric reentry from orbital speed

It inherited the principles of previous studies such as CNES's Pre-X and ESA's AREV (Atmospheric Reentry Experimental Vehicle), and the successful Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD) flown in 1998. The successor of IXV will be the PRIDE spaceplane (Programme for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator in Europe).

Design

IXV used a lifting body arrangement with no wings of any sort, using two movable flaps for re-entry flight control. Re-entry was accomplished in a nose-high attitude like the Space Shuttle, with manoeuvring accomplished by rolling out-of-plane and then lifting in that direction, like an aircraft. Landing was accomplished by parachutes ejected through the top of the vehicle. The airframe was based on a traditional hot-structure/cold-structure arrangement, and was supported on-orbit by a separate manoeuvring and support module similar to the Resource Module intended for the Hermes. The avionics were controlled by a LEON2-FT microprocessor, and interconnected by a MIL-STD-1553B serial bus.