Credits: ESA TV. Building on the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) in the new scenario the pressurized Integrated Cargo Carrier would be replaced by a cargo re-entry capsule, equipped with a heat shield and able to bring back hundreds of kilograms of cargo and valuable experiments. Such a project, named the Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (ARV), would use heritage from the Atmospheric Re-entry Demonstrator (ARD), which flew successfully in 1998, as well as the work done in the definition of past space transportation system concepts.
