[ad_1]
Issued on:
Paris (AFP)
The boom in demand to put small satellites into orbit has increased interest in small rockets, but industry players don’t think the niche will become a business segment in its own right.
“During this time last year, we were able to count over 120 startups for microlaunchers, small rockets that would carry a single small satellite. As we look at today, there are significantly fewer of them,” said Tory Bruno, CEO of Boeing- The Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture, said at a recent industry meeting.
The frenzy of proposals for small rockets, or microlaunchers, comes as new satellite-based telephone and Internet networks are moving away from a few satellites in high geostationary orbits.
Instead they use constellations of many small satellites placed in low earth orbits (LEO).
In the last decade, 1,805 small satellites have been put into orbit and the consultancy Euroconsult expects the number to rise to 10,000 by 2030.
This year, 95 of the 1,079 satellites launched since November 1 were small satellites. Of those, three-quarters were part of SpaceX chief Elon Musk’s Starlink network.
Many startups and small companies believed this would create “a market for microlaunchers that are cheap to build and much cheaper to run than a large launcher,” such as SpaceX’s Ariane or Falcon 9, said Xavier Pasco, a space specialist and head of the French think tank Foundation for Strategic Research.
Only two small rockets are operational for the moment, according to Euroconsult. One is the Chinese Kuaizhou-1 and the other is the Electron from the US company Rocket Lab based in New Zealand.
British tycoon Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit company tested its LauncherOne in May, but due to a technical failure, the rocket launched from the plane was unable to reach space. The latest test by US company Astra in September also failed.
The Indian space agency is planning the inaugural launch of its SSLV for December.
A number of European companies are also competing.
Spanish firm PLD Space is designing a rocket that it plans to launch from Andalusia. British firm Orbex plans to launch its Prime rocket from the north of Scotland.
The Italian Avio and the German OHB, both working on the Ariane, each have their own microlauncher projects. Avio designs a lightweight version of the Vega while OHB’s Rocket Factory Augsburg unit is designing the RFA One.
– ‘Niche market’ –
Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel is not convinced of the need for micro-launchers.
“There is confusion because people say ‘because you have little satellites going to LEO, you need microlaunchers’. That’s not the case,” he told World Satellite Business Week.
One of these reasons is that with the launch of these constellations there are many satellites to be put into orbit quickly, thus favoring their loading on large launchers.
Each Falcon 9 rocket can carry 60 Starlink satellites.
So the cost factor comes into play.
“The key challenge that microlaunchers have is dollars per kilogram, due to the scale effect, it always favors large launch vehicles when the launch vehicle capacity can be filled,” said ULA’s Bruno.
“It’s really a niche market for servicing those constellations,” he added.
But Tiphaine Louradour, head of international launch services (ILS) who markets Russian Proton rockets for commercial launches, stressed that they will offer speed to customers as well.
“It’s more for these micro-launchers to address the government’s need for immediate access to space,” he said.
A small rocket with only one satellite can be prepared much faster than a large one if the launch company waits for a full payload. This also makes them potentially advantageous to replace damaged satellites.
SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said the niche role means there won’t be room for many of these small launchers.
“I don’t think there is enough for more than two, maybe three of these microlaunchers,” he said.
© 2020 AFP
Source link
