THE ICARUS FLIGHT TEST: A SOUNDING ROCKET PLATFORM FOR AN INFLATABLE AERODYNAMIC DECELERATOR EXPERIMENT

ICARUS is a project funded by the European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE program under the grant agreement No 101134997. It targets to bring up to TRL6 the maturation of enabling technologies in the field of re-usable space transportation systems, addressing the innovative re-entry solution based on Inflatable Heat Shields (IHS), deemed applicable for recovery of launch vehicles or their stages.
This paper will present the design of the ICARUS flight test with respect to the mission ConOps, sounding rocket platform selection, sounding rocket configuration, payload accommodation and a test range description with its facilities.