Space Transportation Systems Automatic Landing Flight Experiment "ALFLEX"

Operation Finished

About Automatic Landing Flight Experiment "ALFLEX"

The purpose of ALFLEX (Automatic Landing Flight Experiment) is to establish the basic technology for automatic landing of proposed HOPE. In this experiment, a test vehicle of the HOPE configuration is released from a helicopter flying at high altitude. After the release, it captures the approach path and lands automatically on the runway.
The Landing Flight Experiment was conducted thirteen times in total from July to August in 1996, and each experiment ended succesfully.

Major Characteristics

Length 6.10m (without Pitot Boom)
Span 3.78m
Height 1.35m (without Landing Gears)
Weight 760kg

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