ESA Complete Spaceplane Test Flight; IXV Safely Returns To Earth

hypnosec writes The European Space Agency has successfully completed the first test flight of its Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), as planned, wherein it saw the wingless spaceplane land in one piece in the Pacific Ocean. A Vega VV04 rocket took the IXV to an altitude of 340 km, from which it separated and continued up to 412 km. Reentering from this suborbital path, it recorded a vast amount of data from more than 300 advanced and conventional sensors. According to ESA the spaceplane few east around the globe during its descent and finally landed safely in the the Pacific Ocean west of the Galapagos Islands at about 15:20 GMT.

Comments

Re: What makes a plane a plane?

[kellymcdonald78]

Sounds very similar to the ASSET program from the early '60's http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...