Abstract
OREX (Orbital Re-entry experiment) was the first atmospheric re-entry flight experiment. It was launched by the first H-II rocket in February, 1994 from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Various precious flight data on hypersonic aerothermodynamics were acquired during the flight. In this paper, outline of OREX flight are described and the some characteristics of the flow around OREX are mentioned. It is shown that the flow is both in strong chemically and thermally non-equilibrium in high altitude and in chemically non-equilibrium but thermally equilibrium in lower altitude. For the precise estimation of aerodynamic heat, the effects of the finite rate catalysis should be considered and CFD results with catalytic models are compared with flight data.
