Expert Launch Cancelled after Russia Withdraws from Project

The European Experimental Reentry Test Bed may never be deployed following the cancellation of its inaugural launch aboard a Russian missile.
Simulation of Expert during reenty (Credits: ESA).
The European Space Agency (ESA) has been developing the capsule, named Expert (European eXPErimental Reentry Testbed), since 2002 and its construction was finally completed several months ago, with a significant contribution from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and a final cost of more than 50 million euros.
According to the project’s official website, the top objectives include “to obtain flight data associated with critical ATD phenomena, such as boundary layer transition, gas surface and shock layer interactions, real-gas effects and plasma chemical composition” and “to reduce design margin and uncertainties using in-flight measured data to validate numerical database, computer fluid dynamic tools and to correlate ground test results”.
The highest heat load occurs at the nose cap (Credits: ESA).
Another objective of Expert is to test materials for ESA’s Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV) which will be launched in 2014, carried by the new Vega small-satellite launcher. Expert is 1.6 meters long and masses 450 kg, including the 150 sensors with which it is equipped.
A Russian converted Volna missile was supposed to ...