Japan Tests Reusable Rocket Vehicle Test

Japan Tests Reusable Rocket Vehicle

what goes up must come down

Tokyo - August 8, 2001
ISAS has conducted second flight test campaign of reusable rocket vehicle test (RVT) since 9 to 26 June at ISAS's Noshiro Testing Center in the northern part of Japan main island.

The test was completed after the three successive lift-off and vertical landing flights for demonstration of vertical landing, repeated flight capabilities and turnaround characteristics of liquid hydrogen-propelled rocket vehicle.

The test vehicle was designed and built based upon studies and considerations of general technical issues in designing a future vehicles such as flight on demand, quick turnaround, higher performance, light weight structures and materials and so on.

The performance of the present test vehicle is still very limited, however, many lessons were learned and more flight hardware oriented studies making use of repeated flight environment will be conducted. ISAS will do more works for the readiness of the fully reusable launch systems.

ROCKET SCIENCE

Stennis Keeps The Engine Running Despite X33 Cancellation

Huntsville - July 24, 2001
Stennis Space Center has successfully completed the second test in a three-part series for a Space Launch Initiative (SLI) test program of the Electro-Mechanical Actuator (EMA) technology used on the former X-33 program's Linear Aerospike XRS-2200 flight engine set. The July 23 test achieved 80 percent power-level and went the full scheduled duration of 25 seconds.