EXPRESS

EXPRESS (Experiment Re-entry Space System) was a multi-national (Germany, Japan, Russia, Australia) project for a small, microgravity and reentry research spacecraft. The spacecraft was procured from Khrunichev for a cost of 30 Mio. DM. The payload used a Russian-built reentry vehicle, based on an ICBM reentry vehicle, a Russian-built service module, derived from the OGCh (FOBS) fractional orbital bombing system, and the launch was carried out by the Japanese ISAS space agency on an M-3S-2 with KM-M kick motor. The reentry vehicle carried two CATEX materials processing ovens, three German (CETEX, PYREX, and RAFLEX), and one Japanese (RTEX) heat shield material reentry experiment.