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Monkey goes into Space!

Space Monkey flew to 36km above Oxfordshire on Friday 4th May 2012 as part of our Subsonic Parachute Test programme for the European Space Agency. He hitched a ride aboard the helium balloon carrying the test parachute aloft. After the balloon burst, Space Monkey parachuted safely back to earth.  Space Monkey is a mascot for a local Northamptonshire Secondary School.

Hypercone inflatable supersonic decelerator

The need for an efficient supersonic decelerator arises first for use in aero-braking planetary landers, but may also have other uses such as spacecraft crew escape and aerocapture of orbital planetary probes. Hypercone is a
concept currently under investigation for use in such applications. The paper,  Hypercone Inflatable Supersonic Decelerator was authored by: Glen J. Brown, Vertigo, Inc;  Chirold Epp, Claude Graves, NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center; Steve Lingard and Matt Darley, Vorticity Ltd;  and Keith Jordan, Computational Fluid Dynamics Research Corp.