The European Space Agency and Avio signed a contract for 24-months of development activities aiming at the in-flight demonstration of a reusable upper stage. The activities, for a total value of €40 million, will assess and prepare the requirements, the design and the technologies for both the ground and flight segments required for an upper stage demonstrator that in the future could return to Earth and be reused on another flight.
Space transportation is moving towards frequent reusable launchers supporting an industrial ecosystem around Earth. In the coming decades, the European Space Agency (ESA) foresees transportation hubs in orbit around our planet providing logistic services much like airports or train stations on Earth. Frequent flights to space would benefit from completely reusable rockets, and today’s signature kicks off industrial activity to assess the technologies needed and design concepts for an upper stage demonstration mission.
Building on past and currently ongoing industrial work, the activities will address a demonstrator mission system requirements and technological solutions, ending with a preliminary design for both the flight and ground segments. The contract tackles the technological challenges and focusses on disruptive solutions. The activities will support European industry, reducing development risks as they move towards full rocket reusability into future evolutions of European launch systems, allowing for more flexibility, cost-efficiency and competitiveness.
ESA’s Director of Space Transportation Toni Tolker-Nielsen explained, “I am glad to sign this contract since its importance is two-fold: on one side it addresses technological criticalities in the short-term, on the other side it paves the way for the preparation of Europe’s long-term future in space.”
An upper stage is the last part of a rocket that delivers a payload. Also called an orbital stage these elements have so far never been reused. Europe has demonstrated the capability of all aspects of launching hardware to space and returning it safely to Earth, but putting it all together into a complete reusable upper stage that also launches payloads has the possibility to be a gamechanger.
“The objective and content of the activities are the result of a joint harmonisation work made together with Avio to maximise the technology return on ESA and national investments,” said ESA’s Chief Technical Advisor for Space Transportation Giorgio Tumino, “we are capitalising on progress made in advanced liquid propulsion, reentry, recoverability and reusability technologies, complementing ongoing efforts to de-risk demonstrations of reusable lower stages, supporting different possible scenarios, including evolutions of the Vega family of rockets as well as other newly-defined fully-reusable launch systems in Europe.”
Chief Executive Officer at Avio, Giulio Ranzo, said, “We are excited to work on the reusable upper stage, leveraging on our parallel experiences in liquid oxygen-methane engines and stages as well as on the Space Rider reentry vehicle. We aim to create an advanced, light-weight, performance-efficient solution for our next-generation launchers to serve customers with higher flight rates and competitive costs.”
