Space vehicle from Alenia Aerospace to use Curtiss-Wright Controls data handling and telemetry subsystems
NewsMay 10, 2012
CHARLOTTE, NC ? May 8, 2012 ? Alenia Aermacchi S.p.A. in Turin, Italy selected Curtiss-Wright Controls Avionics & Electronics (CWC-AE) division to supply rugged data acquisition subsystems for Alenia?s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV). Curtiss-Wright Controls engineers will provide their Acra KAM-500, Acra PCM recorder, and Acra network switch for the re-entry vehicle?s data handling and telemetry subsystem for acquiring data to test new re-entry vehicle technologies.
Shipments of qualified spaceflight hardware are expected to be completed in 2012. The IXV industrial team currently is developing proposals for follow on missions that use a re-useable variant of the IXV.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) IXV is designed to be the intermediate element of a European program for in-flight verification of technologies for future operational systems on re-entry vehicles. IXV has a launch scheduled for 2014 from Europe’s spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, using the Vega small launch vehicle. Once it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere and is slowed down by air drag, IXV will descend by parachute to land in the Pacific Ocean to await recovery and post-flight analysis.
For more information, visit www.cwc-ae.com.
