Sent in just minutes ago by ESA’s IXV Flight Operations Director Gerhard Billig at mission control Turin:
After a perfect mission where we monitored IXV until splashdown, the team on board Nos Aries even could see it from the ship with the parachute. Splashdown lead to loss of signal from IXV, as expected. The speedboats went to the site and stayed at a 500m stand-off distance for safety until we gave the go to approach further. All floatation devices were deployed with the IXV swimming nicely. The ship is still performing recovery; we will close here at mission control. I see very many happy faces here!!
Mission control Turin watches for splashdown Credit: ESA/P. Shlyaev
Discussion: one comment
Congratulations!!
I sat here at home in the UK and watched the mission unfold – everything looked absolutely perfect – i hope your foray into space today has brought back useful data to enable you to get the next phase up and running!!!