AN INCREDIBLE doughnut-shaped spacecraft designed to fly precious cargo back to Earth has completed its first test mission.
Atmos Space Cargo hailed their daring mission a “success” after the dessert-shaped spaceship splashed down about 2,000 kilometres off the coast of Brazil.
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The German startup’s Phoenix vehicle was launched by SpaceX’s Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission April 21.
And the firm claimed it gathered a wide range of data from the first flight test of its spacecraft.
Sebastian Klaus, chief executive of Atmos, said that the extraordinary space mission had three main targets.
Firstly, they aimed to collect data from the spaceship itself in flight.
Secondly, they wanted to operate and return data from payloads in the spacecraft.
And finally the firm aimed to collect data on the performance of the aircraft’s inflatable heat shield during reentry into Earth.
The chief executive confirmed that they “got a lot of flight data”, saying that all four of their payloads turned on and produced the crucial data.
He praised the mission as a “full success”.
But unfortunately for the German firm, the craft’s heat shield analysis could not take place, due to an unexpected change in scheduling.
Atmos had previously planned for a reentry in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, near the island of Réunion.
Klaus said the company spent six whole months preparing the area for reentry at this point.
This apparatus included ships to recover the spaceship once it had splashed down, and aircraft to collect data during reentry.
But in an unfortunate change of plans – SpaceX informed Atmos of “operational constraints” just five weeks before the launch.
This completely changed the location of the upcoming splashdown, instead directing the spacecraft down towards the coast of Brazil.
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The company then had to line up new ground stations in South America to communicate with the spacecraft during key phases of flight.
It also had to charter a plane to attempt to collect data during reentry.
But the splashdown location ended up being way beyond the range of the aircraft.
The extra distance, along with cloud cover, prevented the Atmos from getting useful imagery of the doughnut-ship’s reentry.
Klaus therefore said Atmos considered that third target “partly successful”.
He added that it would be “very difficult” to get data from Phoenix.
But the defiant boss said that the data it did collect would help the firm with its second Phoenix reentry vehicle, which it plans to test next year.
“It would be much better to have more data on the critical last phase of the flight,” Klaus said.
“But then on the other side, there’s a lot we have learned about all other systems and operational aspects.”
He concluded that the whole operation was a “very successful mission”.
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