Waiting for Space Rider

Tests for the parachute of the ESA spacecraft with strong Italian leadership have been conducted in Sardinia, a laboratory to be launched into orbit, without astronauts, for research and surveillance. An idea and a challenge to the market.

BY EMILIO COZZI

Polygon of Salto di Quirra, Sardinia, summer 2024.

Falling from a helicopter, something drops from three and a half kilometers high, then, hanging on a parachute, gently glides to the ground.

The parafoil works perfectly; it is just the latest test in a long series aimed at validating a vehicle that Europe, led by Italy, has been waiting for years, the Space Rider. With some simplification, it could be described as a mini shuttle, a reusable space vehicle that takes experiments into orbit and has the capability to return to earth to be recovered with its cargo. Apart from the color (it has always been presented in its black and white version), the analogies with the glorious American Space Shuttle end there.

First of all, Space Rider is not designed to transport people. Eight meters long, equivalent to two cars, it has a hold capable of containing up to 800 kilograms of cargo to be transported into low Earth orbit. It is not winged, but rather a lifting body capable of surviving the extreme temperatures of re-entry into the atmosphere.

The project, approved and funded by ESA, the European Space Agency, in 2016, provides that, after deorbiting thanks to the thermal shield, Space Rider returns to the ground slowed by a parachute. There are similar vehicles for similar applications, namely to carry experiments to be conducted in orbit in weightlessness and the vacuum of space. One is in use by the U.S. military, the Boeing X-37: it has wings to glide and land on a runway like the Space Shuttle; another, Chinese, is precisely known only by name, Shenlong. Regarding its shape and uses, the international debate is open (the most widespread suspicion is that it is an anti-satellite orbital weapon system).

Space Rider’s operation is also similar: after vertical launch, atop a rocket (Space Rider’s rocket will be Vega C), it enters orbit and opens the bay where experiments and technology demonstrators are housed. The stay beyond the atmosphere can last for months. Two, in the case of Space Rider. The Boeing X-37 has carried out missions lasting more than two years, taking various U.S. Defense devices into space and beyond. Between 2022 and 2023 Shenlong was in orbit for at least 276 days. During its flight, the spaceplane released an object that moved in coordination with its orbit.

A Space Laboratory

Orbit is a highly sought-after environment for technological development because, floating in constant “free fall,” materials, fluids, and organisms behave differently than they would on the Earth’s surface or inside the atmosphere, where they are subjected to the gravitational pull of our planet. It is a condition, commonly referred to as “weightlessness,” that is exclusive and very, very expensive. Just think of the prices per kilogram (from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars) to launch anything beyond the sky.

For this reason, having a vehicle that acts as an automated laboratory is a significant advantage; in terms of research objectives, of course, but also from a commercial point of view. According to Avio – the company largely responsible for the realization of the Vega C rocket – Space Rider can carry up to 800 kilograms into orbit, in a volume of 1,200 liters (three times the trunk of an SUV).

As more than twenty years of activity aboard the International Space Station have taught, the applications of Space Rider will be vast: in the chemical and materials fields; it will allow the development of molecules for new drugs, as well as studies on biomedicine and biology, “hard” sciences like physics. It will allow testing of robotic machinery prototypes; it will enable Earth observation and military surveillance campaigns. Depending on the mission requirements, Space Rider can indeed operate at different inclinations, from polar and sun-synchronous orbit to those more similar to the ISS trajectory. There is a market, proponents of the vehicle claim, to build even more and offer a launch and recovery service for institutions and private entities.

The question remains whether it was more true eight years ago or today.

From Idea to Debut, at Least a Decade

Presented and funded for the first time at the 2016 ESA Ministerial Conference with 36.7 million euros, Space Rider was supposed to take off for its inaugural flight in 2020. Funds were renewed at the ministerial meetings in 2019 and 2022 as timelines extended. And contracts were signed: with Thales Alenia Space and Avio, for a total of 167 million euros, and with Telespazio and Altec, which were entrusted with the ground segment. It is no coincidence that we are talking about companies from our country: although incubated by ESA, Italy is the lead as the main financier in the Space Rider program, coordinated by the Italian Space Agency and Cira, the Italian Aerospace Research Center, which has facilities to study and test the aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic parts, and thermal protection systems for descent and landing.

Since 2020, however, the goal has started to shift further and further. First to 2022, then to 2024. Now we are talking about 2026, when ten years will have passed since the first approval and six since the first declared date for the debut mission. In between, everything happened, stricto sensu: there was also a pandemic and the delay (of a year) of the first flight of Vega C.

Criticisms (or controversies) aside, it would still be appropriate to observe things in the right context, and admit that at the moment, in Europe, Space Rider is unique, with its pros and cons (it has limited useful volume and autonomy, but the ability to perform multiple missions, up to six).

Along with those military projects of the United States and China, other similar projects include Sierra Space Corporation’s Dream Chaser (which, however, is more of a cargo shuttle and has a version for transporting people) and India’s RLV. True, they all differ from the European vehicle by a not insignificant detail: they are spaceplanes, with wings to maneuver aerodynamically on reentry.

The Market of the New Decade

At the end of the sail ropes, 27 meters long and 10 meters wide (about ten times larger than a paragliding sail for human flight) descending slowly between the arid hills of Salto di Quirra, there was no Space Rider, but a test model with a weight distribution similar to the real reentry module. The next tests foresee the same mock-up but on a real scale. The only available images of the vehicle are renderings showing its potential and those of the IXV, Intermediate Experimental Vehicle, precursor prototype of the Space Rider launched in 2015 on a suborbital flight.

Avio’s decision to step out from under the Arianespace umbrella to sell the transport service with Vega C in the coming years, “going solo,” and at the same time ESA’s choice to open up the launcher market, inaugurated a competitive regime in terms of access to orbit. ArianeGroup, in 2022, presented a new program, unlinked from the European Space Agency, based on the Susie vehicle, a shuttle that could also be the first to transport astronauts from a Community country (from the spaceport of Kourou, in French Guiana). While on the horizon there are not one, but at least three private space stations ready to take over from the ISS, in the realm of research and experimentation in microgravity.

It is a complex mosaic in which the market and the choices of individual governments will define the success of different visions of low Earth orbit in the new decade. A matter far from limited to the extra-atmosphere in which Space Rider promises to play a not insignificant role.