ASSET (spacecraft)

ASSET, short for Aerothermodynamic Elastic Structural Systems Environmental Tests, was a United States research program that flew uncrewed sub-scale reentry vehicles built by McDonnell. It began in 1960 to verify the superalloy heat shield of the X-20 Dyna-Soar before crewed flights, using a biconic body with a low delta wing to represent the Dyna-Soar nose, where aerodynamic heating would be most intense. After the X-20 was cancelled in December 1963, the completed vehicles were used to study reentry heating and structure for future spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle. Each was launched on a suborbital trajectory from Pad 17B at Cape Canaveral, on a Thor or Thor-Delta rather than the Scout first planned, and made a water landing in the South Atlantic near Ascension Island. Six vehicles were built and only one was recovered, now on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The results led McDonnell to propose Winged Gemini, a Gemini spacecraft able to land on a runway.