German startup Atmos Space Cargo spent half a year planning a reentry in the Indian Ocean, only for SpaceX to pull the rug from under their feet.
German startup Atmos Space Cargo has called the first flight of its donut-shaped reentry vehicle a success.Atmos’ Phoenix spacecraft was launched by SpaceX’s Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission on April 21. The company claims it gathered a wealth of data from the first flight test of its Phoenix spacecraft.
Unfortunately, though, SpaceX announced a sudden change in trajectory for Bandwagon-3 just five weeks before launch.This meant the reentry location for Phoenix was completely changed. The vehicle also performed a much steeper reentry due to the new trajectory. The result is that Atmos was not able to recover its spacecraft.Atmos’ altered missionAtmos spent half a year making plans for a reentry in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, near the island of Réunion. This included chartering ships to recover its Phoenix spacecraft after splashdown and aircraft to collect reentry data.However, just over a month before launch, SpaceX informed Atmos of a change in trajectory to Bandwagon-3. The mission, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, would have to change its trajectory due to “operational constraints” of the primary payload, a South Korean reconnaissance satellite.Ultimately, this resulted in Phoenix performing a splashdown some 1,243 miles off the coast of Brazil. This ruled out any attempt to recover the spacecraft. The steeper trajectory also lead to higher loads on the spacecraft during reentry.Still, Atoms claims its first flight test was a success. The donut-shaped Phoenix spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9 upper stage roughly 90 minutes after liftoff. About 30 minutes later, it began reentry over the South Atlantic Ocean.A ‘very successful mission’During a media briefing on Aprill 22, Atmos CEO Sebastian Klaus said the company’s Phoenix flight test had three key goals: Collecting data during flight; operating and collecting data from the spacecraft’s payloads; and collecting data on Phoenix’s inflatable heat shield during reentry.“What is confirmed is that we got a lot of flight data,” Klaus said, according to a SpaceNews report. All four payloads turned on and returned data, he added. “We can call that a full success.”Prior to the altered launch of Bandwagon-3, Atmos positioned new ground stations in South America to communicate with Phoenix during its descent. It also chartered an aircraft that would attempt to collect data. On the day, Klaus explained, the aircraft was out of range of the splashdown location. Cloud cover also prevented Atmos from collecting imagery of the reentry.According to Klaus, the heat shield data goal was “partly successful”, though it is continuing to analyze the data. Some of that data suggests the heat shield did inflate. However, Klaus did admit that, due to the distance, it was “very difficult” to collect data during Phoenix’s final moments.“All in all, it’s a very successful mission,” Klaus said, adding that the data collected would help the company improve its second Phoenix reentry vehicle, scheduled for launch next year.“It would be much better to have more data on the critical last phase of the flight,” he continued. “But then on the other side, there’s a lot we have learned about all other systems and operational aspects.”
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