The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment ("IRVE-3") is the third in a series of suborbital flight tests of this new technology. The TEST ARTICLE IS SCHEDULED to launch from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore July 21, 2012 aboard a NASA Black Brant XI suborbital sounding rocket between 8 and 11 a.m. After launch the rocket will climb 287 miles (462 kilometers) into the skies over the Atlantic Ocean. The IRVE-3 will separate from the sounding rocket, its aeroshell will get pumped full of nitrogen and then the inflated heat shield and payload will plummet back through Earth's atmosphere. Cameras and instruments will transmit pictures and data to researchers in the Wallops control room the entire time to weigh the value of what many now call "space breaks." Part of the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) project within NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist's Game Changing Development (GCD) Program, IRVE-3 is one of NASA's many projects to DEVELOP NEW TECHNOLOGIES to advance space travel. NASA Langley Research Center and Orbital Sciences Corporation may test a later version on CYGNUS SPACECRAFT RE-ENTRY from the International Space Station in the next 36-months. If flight tests continue to be satisfactory, one potential application for inflatable reentry vehicles other than planetary probes is emergency evacuation of the International Space Station and other future manned orbital stations. Individual reentry survival mechanisms were first proposed in the early 1960s with the MOOSE (Man Out Of Space Easiest) concept from General Electric, notes GIZMAG.
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