NASA X-38

The NASA X-38 was a prototype Crew Return Vehicle intended to bring astronauts home from the International Space Station in an emergency. It used a wingless lifting body shape descended from the US Air Force X-24 program of the 1960s, but unlike the X-24 it landed under a steerable parafoil, with a skid gear for touchdown and mostly autonomous flight control backed up by a ground pilot. Two atmospheric prototypes, V-131 and V-132, were dropped from NASA's NB-52 carrier aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, and the orbital vehicle V-201 would have used an eight-thruster deorbit propulsion system before reentry. The empty vehicle weighed about 10,660 kilograms and was 9.1 meters long. The program was cancelled in 2002 because of budget cuts, and the roughly 80 percent complete V-201 was placed in storage in January 2003.