Orbital Transfer Vehicles

C. Pairk, in Thermal Design of Aero-Assisted Orbital Transfer Vehicles, Ed. H. F. Nelson (AIAA, Washington, 1985), p. 100. 

Berend N, Bertrand S (2009) MDO Approach for early design of aerobraking orbital transfer vehicles. Acta Astronaut 65 1668-1678... 

One of the tasks undertaken by the Computational Chemistry Branch at NASA Ames Research Center is to provide critically needed chemical and physical data for NASA hypersonics projects such as the aeroassisted orbital transfer vehicle and the scramjet propulsion system in the National Aerospace Plane. In order to meet this goal, we have embarked on theoretical studies of the reaction kinetics and dynamics of high temperature air (T 5000 50000 K) and moderately high temperature hydrogen-air mixtures T < 3000 K). 

The category of orbital transport vehicles is illustrated here by the European vehicle ATV (antomated transfer vehicle), developed by an industrial consortium under the responsibiUty of Astrium on behalf of the ESA. 

Second Coast Phase (Transfer Orbit) The RCS attempted to stabilize the vehicle, but it continued to tumble. The RCS depleted its remaining propellant approximately twelve minutes after the PCS shut down the second bum. 

Successfiil tests gave grounds to the American specialists to start development of the experimental space system NEFSTF with the Topaz-2 NFS and electrical jet-propulsion engines of different types to transfer a space vehicle from a radiation-safe orbit to the geostationary one (H = 36,000 km) (O Fig. 59.9), and to start development of the SFACE-R thermionic NFS of 40 kW electrical power using the Topaz-2 technology. 

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