Smooth sailing, rough landing for 'space lifeboat'

The X-38 was dropped from the wing of a B-52, deployed its parafoil, then landed in dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base on Thursday

March 30, 2000
Web posted at: 1:42 PM EST (1842 GMT)

By Richard Stenger
CNN Interactive Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California (CNN) -- After a smooth descent, a prototype "lifeboat" for the International Space Station had a slightly rough landing during its third test flight Thursday.

The low-cost X-38 is the predecessor of a vehicle that could become the first new U.S. manned spacecraft to fly to and from space in more than 20 years.

After a B-52 airplane dropped the unmanned craft from 39,000 feet, the X-38 deployed a parachute and a steerable parafoil as planned, according to the a spokesman for Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

The 7.5-ton craft then descended gracefully underneath a bright white and blue parafoil through clear Southern California skies. However, its left landing skid did not deploy and at the end of the 11-minute descent, the X-38 smacked the ground roughly.

The craft's landing gear consists of skids rather than wheels.

"It touched down on the right and front (skids), skidded to one side and came to an abrupt stop," said Dryden spokesman Alan Brown. "We consider that a very minor problem."

	INTERACTIVE
How the X-38 returns to Earth
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International Space Station

Brown said that preliminary indications suggest the vehicle escaped damage, but further evaluation by mission technicians would be necessary to know for certain.

The future vessel will allow ISS crewmembers to evacuate the space station in case of an emergency. The craft will glide through the atmosphere unpowered, like the space shuttle, then use a huge parafoil to steer and glide to a final landing.

Atmospheric drop tests of the X-38 began two years ago, using increasingly complex experimental vehicles, each dropped from a higher altitude than its predecessor.

For the first test from space, still a few years away, an unpiloted version will be deployed from the space shuttle and descend to a landing. The final craft is tentatively slated to begin operations aboard the ISS in 2004 or 2005.

In the early years of the space station, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft will be attached to the station as a crew return vehicle. But as the size of the station crew increases, a return vehicle that can accommodate up to seven passengers eventually will be needed, NASA said.

Preliminary proposals to develop and build a crew return vehicle exceeded $2 billion. NASA estimates it can produce the X-38 prototype at one-tenth that cost, in large part by using many existing technologies to construct the vehicle.

Space officials hope to upgrade the design for other purposes, such as a manned spacecraft that could be launched on a French Ariane 5 rocket booster.

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