Hitting the atmosphere at high speed can mean the end for unprepared spacecraft, but for Inversion Space’s Arc reentry vehicle? It could be the beginning of a new way to brake.
NASA announced today it awarded Inversion a contract to study a new method of interplanetary travel—called aerocapture—which uses a planetary body’s atmosphere to slow incoming spacecraft looking to enter into orbit.
What’s that mean? The contract tasks Inversion with studying how its Arc lifting-body reentry vehicle could be used to demonstrate aerocapture for the first time using Earth’s atmosphere.
“One of the nice things about having a maneuverable reentry vehicle is we can fly trajectories that represent an aerocapture of a different planetary body here at Earth,” Inversion CEO Justin Fiaschetti told Payload. He added the study could open the door for Arc to play a central role on future missions “looking at Mars, looking at Titan, looking at Uranus, [and] looking at Venus.”
Today, deep space missions attempting to enter into orbit around other planets or moons must carry a lot of fuel, firing thrusters upon arrival to slow their approach. The setup means these rare interplanetary missions often sacrifice costly payload space for additional fuel—lest they catch fire on arrival.
In theory, aerocapture would allow Arc to fly interplanetary flights loaded with less fuel, and more payload compared to traditional spacecraft. Aerocapture would also allow for quicker journeys to otherworldly locales.
“Aerocapture lets you actually get to other planets faster because you don’t need to spend months of time firing your propulsion system in a slow-down configuration,” Fiaschetti said. “You just go full speed to the planet, then hit the atmosphere and brake before getting into orbit.”
Lessons learned: The aerocapture study contract is somewhat of a sidequest for Inversion, which is working towards its first in-space demonstration of Arc planned for NET 2027. But it’s not a total diversion.
Fiaschetti told Payload that studying aerocapture using Earth’s atmosphere can help Inversion offer more maneuverability to customers on Earth, paving the way for new kinds of missions that leverage the atmosphere to maneuver in ways other spacecraft can’t match.
“The same principles can be useful here on Earth for highly maneuverable satellites,” Fiaschetti said. “So, we’re fully focused on the kind of interplanetary use cases for this NASA contract, but the same technology that we’ve developed for our Arc vehicle can be used for aerodynamic orbit changing as well.”
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