Author Topic: smallest orbital reentry vehicle  (Read 7147 times)

Offline ikke666

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smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« on: 04/09/2017 07:02 pm »
what is the smallest orbirtal reentry vehicle? Please post also a picture and specs of it?  ;)

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #1 on: 04/09/2017 07:14 pm »
Boeing X-37 is the smallest operational spacecraft that I can think of.  I think there have been smaller test vehicles though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
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Offline DatUser14

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #2 on: 04/09/2017 07:18 pm »
Corona film return capsule would be my guess.
Titan IVB was a cool rocket

Offline Helodriver

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #3 on: 04/09/2017 07:19 pm »
My guess would be the Reentry Breakup Recorders, which were 1 foot in diameter and weighed 9 pounds.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/768.html

Offline punder

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #4 on: 04/09/2017 07:26 pm »
I've always wondered how they retrieved the famous staging film from the S-IVB. Was it by way of small entry capsules?

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #5 on: 04/09/2017 08:34 pm »
There are companies working on vehicles to return small payloads if few kgs from ISS.


Offline hektor

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #6 on: 04/09/2017 08:50 pm »
Hayabusa ?


Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #7 on: 04/09/2017 11:55 pm »
Possibly the film-return capsules carried on the close-look Yantar satellites (not the main conical descent modules) or those on the Don satellites.
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Offline savuporo

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #8 on: 04/10/2017 01:46 am »
I thought Genesis and Stardust, but these were actually pretty large. 225 kg for Genesis
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Online Galactic Penguin SST

Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #9 on: 04/10/2017 02:29 am »
Possibly the film-return capsules carried on the close-look Yantar satellites (not the main conical descent modules) or those on the Don satellites.

Are they really smaller than those on their US counterparts (HEXAGON and/or GAMBIT)?
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Offline Proponent

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #10 on: 04/10/2017 08:15 am »
I've always wondered how they retrieved the famous staging film from the S-IVB. Was it by way of small entry capsules?

Yes.

Offline ikke666

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #11 on: 04/10/2017 04:59 pm »
thanks all for the replies  ;D
does anyone know what the material is of the heatshield of these vehicles?

Offline punder

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #12 on: 04/10/2017 07:09 pm »
I've always wondered how they retrieved the famous staging film from the S-IVB. Was it by way of small entry capsules?

Yes.

Wow. This isn't OT because we still don't know how big the capsules were... I'd love to see pictures of these things, and how they were mounted on the stage.

Offline Proponent

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« Last Edit: 04/10/2017 07:23 pm by Proponent »

Offline whitelancer64

Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #14 on: 04/10/2017 07:35 pm »
I've always wondered how they retrieved the famous staging film from the S-IVB. Was it by way of small entry capsules?

Yes.

Wow. This isn't OT because we still don't know how big the capsules were... I'd love to see pictures of these things, and how they were mounted on the stage.

The capsule was 7.7 inches in diameter, 28.5 inches long and weighed approximately 60 pounds.

Two pictures here:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=219&t=1576721
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Offline Sam Ho

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #15 on: 04/11/2017 12:06 am »
I've always wondered how they retrieved the famous staging film from the S-IVB. Was it by way of small entry capsules?

Yes.

Wow. This isn't OT because we still don't know how big the capsules were... I'd love to see pictures of these things, and how they were mounted on the stage.

The capsule was 7.7 inches in diameter, 28.5 inches long and weighed approximately 60 pounds.

Two pictures here:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=219&t=1576721
Note that these camera pods were not orbital reentry vehicles.  The were jettisoned after first stage, so at around 70km and 2.7km/s or thereabouts.  Impressive nonetheless.

Offline brickmack

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #16 on: 04/11/2017 01:07 pm »
MIRKA2 holds the record I think, though its not flown yet. 10 cm wide, and under a kilogram

Offline ikke666

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #17 on: 04/11/2017 05:51 pm »
I think indeed mirka2 is the winner. but do exist microsat reentry vehicles with heat tiles like the space shuttle?  :o i suppose the vehicle will be a bit larger because i think the tiles will be quite large compared to the vehicle.

Offline Kansan52

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #18 on: 04/11/2017 06:11 pm »
Micrometeorite?

Offline whitelancer64

Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #19 on: 04/13/2017 01:03 pm »
“For this experiment, we are flying three different probes and we have three new heat shield materials that NASA is wanting to get flight-test data for,” said John Dec, principle investigator of the RED-Data 2 experiment at Terminal Velocity Aerospace in Atlanta.

“The primary data that we are attempting to collect is temperature data from thermocouples that are embedded in the heat shield of each probe.”

The three materials being put to the test: A new form of Avcoat that will be used on Orion human spacecraft, the others, developed by the NASA Ames Research Center, are the lightweight Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (C-PICA) and Conformal Silicone Impregnated Refractory Ceramic Ablator (C-SIRCA).

“It’s kind of like a lawn dart without the stick,” Dec said of the probes. “The RED-Data probes are only about 9 inches [22cm]  in diameter and weigh about 5.5 kilograms.”

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/12/cygnus-freighter-to-make-science-enabling-delivery-to-the-space-station/
"One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to." - Elon Musk
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Offline ikke666

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Re: smallest orbital reentry vehicle
« Reply #20 on: 04/15/2017 05:59 pm »
thanks for the replies  ;D

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