The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded Spanish company Deimos Space a contract for a spacecraft whose sole purpose is to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere so engineers can see what happens.
There is a bit more to the €17 million ($19 million) Destructive Re-entry Assessment Container Object (DRACO) mission, but ultimately, the plan is to better understand the breakup process and remove some of the existing uncertainties.
According to ESA, DRACO will weigh in at 200 kg and have no propulsion or navigation system. It will instead rely on its launcher to line it up for re-entry, no more than 12 hours after launch.
The plan is to use a Vega-C to launch the spacecraft in 2027, although other European launchers could be considered.
According to Paolo Minacapilli, deputy technical lead for DRACO at Deimos, the re-entry phase will start at 120 km altitude, when data will be recorded and stored in a capsule. The capsule will separate at 60 km and transmit the data to a relay service over the next 20 minutes as it descends by parachute. There are no plans to recover the capsule after splashdown.
We asked Minacapilli what sensors would be running during the re-entry. He told The Register: “Several sensors will be active during the re-entry, mainly measuring temperatures, deformations, and separation detection. The current baselined sensors are thermocouples for temperature measurements and strain gauges for deformations.
“These sensors will also be exploited to detect the separation of objects/components from the spacecraft. In addition, infrared cameras will provide qualitative images and videos of the re-entry environment and complement the thermocouples with additional temperature measurements.”
ESA noted that there would be 200 sensors and four cameras recording the destruction.
As for the spacecraft’s composition, Minacapilli said: “Most of the structure will be made from aluminium, which is expected to demise and therefore not survive re-entry.
“Some components such as the processing unit, capsule, and sensors will be protected by proper thermal insulation systems, allowing them [to] survive. High-temperature, low-conductivity rigid materials made in carbon resin are currently baselined. Their testing in a plasma wind tunnel facility is ongoing.”
Little data is available regarding what happens to a spacecraft as it burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Recent experiments have ridden onboard Northrop Grumman’s expendable Cygnus cargo freighter for the International Space Station, and SpaceX memorably shared some spectacular re-entry footage from a recent Starship test flight.
In 2013, ESA mounted a camera inside an Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) in an attempt to watch a re-entry from inside a spacecraft.
However, engineers and scientists can always use more data, hence the decision to build and launch DRACO.
Re-entry is targeted for the Indian Ocean in the unlikely event that anything other than the capsule survives.
“The goal of DRACO is not to assess that the whole spacecraft demised during re-entry,” Minacapilli said, “but to collect significant data that will allow us to validate re-entry predictive models, verify ground demise testing, and demonstrate fundamental understanding of re-entry breakup processes.” ®
