Quote:
Originally Posted by spacewalker
Hey folks.
I think the ARV project is not complete dead. Dr. Reiter from esa spoke last september in a presentation about this. The phase A study from esa and Astrium finished in 2011. I mean the project is parked for a wihle.
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I hate to disappoint you, but the project is not parked. It is in indefinite limbo. The phase A study was indeed finished in 2011. No funds were provided by the ministerial conference for anything beyond that. So, Astrium and ESA finished the study and archived everything. With no follow-up study or development being financed, the effort has been closed down. Maybe not permanently, but it is no longer an active ESA project.
Naturally, the effort could always be restarted if the ESA ministerial conference decided to finance some sort of follow-up work. But that currently is not the case. ESA is now working on a proposal to do an ATV-derived Service Module for the Orion spacecraft. They were asked by NASA to come up with such a proposal. Dr. Reiter recently confirmed that ESA is working on such a proposal. However, several ESA memberstates, such as Italy and France have publically anounced their opposition to this proposal. So far, the only ESA member responding favorably to this proposal is Germany.