splashed down to within 4.9 km of its target point in the Pacific Ocean between the Marquesas Islands and Hawaii after one hour and 41 minutes of flight. The ARD was recovered roughly five hours following splash down. Following recovery, the vehicle was transported back to Europe and subject to detailed technical analysis in order to acquire more information on its performance. Engineers analysing data from its sub-orbital flight reported that all the capsule's systems had performed well and according to expectations; analysis of the craft's real-time telemetry broadcast during the flight had also reported that all electrical equipment and propulsion systems functioned nominally. The onboard telemetry systems and reception stations had all performed well, and the onboard GPS receiver worked satisfactorily during the entire flight except, as expected, during black-out in reentry. Following post-mission analysis of the ARD's performance, it was announced that all of the demonstration and system requirements of the programme had been successfully achieved. The test flight itself was described as having been "nearly nominal", particularly the trajectory and flight control aspects; additionally, many of the onboard systems, such as the navigation (primary and backup), propulsion, thermal protection, communication, and DRS were found to have performed either as predicted or to have been outside these predictions by only a small margin. During reentry, the heat shield temperature reached a recorded peak temperature of 900 °C; nevertheless, both the vehicle's cone and heat shield thermal protection were found in a perfect state following its retrieval. Issues highlighted during analysis included the role of design uncertainties having led to difficulties in observing some physical phenomena such as real gas effects, addressing aerothermal environment characterization was also hindered due to the premature failure of some thermocouples. Overall, the flight was stated to have brought a great amount of high quality aerodynamic information back which, amongst other benefits, served to confirm and enhance the capabilities of ground-based prediction tools. Since its retrieval and the conclusion of post-mission examination, the sole ARD vehicle itself has been preserved and has become a publicly-accessible exhibit at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, Netherlands. See also IXV, follow-up ESA reentry demonstrator, tested in February 2015. OREX, equivalent Japanese demonstrator from 1994, developed and flown by NASDA CARE, experimental test vehicle for the ISRO Orbital Vehicle launched on 18 December 2014 atop GSLV Mk III LVM 3X References External links EADS ARD