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Small Industry Looks for Solutions to a Big Problem As the people who build, launch and use small satellites gather this week for their annual conference in Logan, Utah, they face the same old problems -- and a couple of new ones -- that make it difficult to get small payloads into orbit on small budgets. They also have a glimmer of hope in the plans of a new crop of entrepreneurs trying to lower the cost of getting people and payloads into space. Launch prices remain much higher than the modest budgets available for most small satellite missions and new government-funded projects have been slow to materialize. The Satellites The U.S. Air Force canceled the TechSat 21 space demonstration, an experiment meant to show that several small satellites flying in formation could carry out the same tasks as a single larger satellite. Then, in February small satellites were dealt another blow when the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and immediate grounding of the remaining fleet put at least a temporary end to free rides for even the smallest hitchhiker payloads. But the past year has not been without positive developments. The first satellite in the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (AlSAT-1 for the Algerian Space Agency) was launched Nov. 28 aboard a Cosmos 3-M rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., of Guildford, England, is building all of the satellites in the constellation. "AlSAT-1 has been fully operational since February. It is returning excellent image data which has been used extensively by the Algerian remote sensing community," said Martin Sweeting, Surrey's chief executive officer. The next three satellites for the Disaster Monitoring Constellation are in Moscow awaiting shipment to Plesetsk for a Sept. 26 launch on a Cosmos rocket. In addition, Poway, Calif.-based SpaceDev made its on orbit debut with the launch of its first satellite, a $5 million, 40-kilogram spacecraft for the University of California at Berkeley dubbed the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPSat) satellite. SpaceDev President Jim Benson said CHIPSat, built in less than two years from hardware with no flight heritage, is proving the merits of the small satellite approach. SpaceDev launched the suitcase-sized CHIPSat in January as a secondary payload on one of Boeing's Delta 2 launch vehicles, one of the few low-cost launch options around, but one that is not easy to arrange. The primary payload was NASA's ICESat spacecraft. Boeing does not actively pursue secondary payload business, but will perform them "when we can accommodate customers," Boeing spokesman Robert Villanueva said, noting that there currently are no secondary payloads on the Delta 2 manifest. "They are very challenging to put together [with the primary payload], and a lot of [primary payload] customers come to us and say they want a dedicated launch," Villanueva said. And Boeing has no secondary missions planned for its Delta 4 launch vehicle. The Launchers One of the mainstays of the small launch business is Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Pegasus rocket. But at prices of $15 million and up, the Pegasus is often beyond the reach of experimenters with satellites the size of CHIPSat. Orbital's launch business, is now dominated by missile defense work, which will provide about 40 percent of the company's expected $570 million in 2003 revenues, Barry Beneski, an Orbital spokesman, said. Launch of orbital rockets will provide only about 10 percent ofOrbital's revenue in 2003, he said. After a high of six Pegasus and two Taurus launches in 1998, business has been relatively stable, if slow, for the Pegasus, whose primary customer is now NASA, which requires two or three Pegasus launches per year, Beneski said. Taurus has not attempted a launch since a failed mission in September 2001 and its next scheduled launch is for the Rocsat 2 satellite for the government of Taiwan late this year, he said. Orbital's Minotaur, which incorporates Pegasus and Minuteman missile hardware, is used exclusively by the U.S. Air Force and not available to many researchers. Lockheed Martin has not done any manufacturing work on its Athena small launcher since placing the program in standby mode in October 2001. While there are no missions on the Athena manifest, the program is still active, company spokeswoman Joan Underwood said. Europe's Arianespace does offer secondary payload opportunities on some flights of its Ariane 5 launcher. The European Space Agency plans to spend more than 300 million euros on the development of the Vega small-satellite launcher. The development is being led by ELV, a joint venture of FiatAvio of Colleferro, Italy, and the Italian Space Agency. The three-stage rocket will be operated from Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, beginning in 2006 and will be capable of placing a 1,500-kilogram satellite into a 700-kilometer low Earth orbit. That leaves people with small payloads to launch hoping for some future breakthrough that would provide more opportunities to launch small payloads at a price commensurate with their typically modest budgets. The U.S. Air Force, for example, is trying to address the high cost of access to space by developing a low-cost, rapid response launcher for small payloads. The New Players The biggest buzz, however, surrounds Elon Musk, a 32-year-old entrepreneur who is plowing a considerable amount of the fortune he made building and selling two Internet-based businesses into a rocket called the Falcon. Musk's Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX for short, has set up shop in El Segundo, Calif. and begun manufacturing its first rocket all in the past year. Musk is promising to make the low cost launch a reality: $6 million for 450 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The Falcon, Musk said, is on track to make its debut in February carrying a payload for the U.S. Defense Department. Dennis Wingo, chief executive officer of the Huntsville, Ala.-based satellite start-up SkyCorp Inc., said the combination of SpaceX and advances in small, lightweight components offer renewed hope that the microsatellite revolution predicted more than a decade ago might finally happen. "If SpaceX is able to meet their cost numbers -- or even twice what they are advertising today -- it will have a beneficial effect on the small satellite market," Wingo said. "We watch SpaceX's development with interest," Sweeting said. The industry clearly needs a small launcher capable of carrying 1,000 kilogram payloads to low-Earth orbit, at a price not exceeding $10,000 per kilogram, he said. Troy Thrash, an analyst and program manager for Bethesda, Md.-based Futron Corp.'s space and telecommunications division, agreed that Falcon's success would be a huge development. "You hate to say open up a new market, but effectively that may be what happens," Thrash said. SpaceX's success is far from assured. Failure, Thrash said, could be more than just another disappointment for an industry inured to setbacks. "If SpaceX fails for one reason or another -- whether there are technical difficulties or whether [Musk] decides that because he's footing the bill, that it's turning into a lot more money than he thought -- it's going to look very bad," Thrash said. "Another black eye for an industry that's full of them at this point." Microcosm Inc., of El Segundo, Calif. also is seeking to enter the small launch market. Robert Conger, Microcosm's executive vice president, said the company's proposed Sprite Small Expendable Launch Vehicle would carry 700 pounds to orbit for $2.5 million. Development of Sprite, however, is on hold until Microcosm secures government funding. Conger said the company has set its sights on winning a contract under the Operationally Responsive Spacelift program, the proposed Pentagon effort to develop a low-cost launcher that can get payloads into space on short notice. The Pentagon sought $25 million for that program in its 2004 budget request. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force are seeking contractors to build an unmanned hypersonic aircraft capable of reaching any point in the world in about two hours. Such an aircraft could eventually serve as a springboard into space, developing technology that could lead to a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft. The new aircraft is part of DARPA's Force Application and Launch from Continental United States program to build a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle by the year 2025. A simpler and shorter-term version of the craft, dubbed the Small Launch Vehicle, is expected by 2010. In the meantime, other private efforts, while not aimed explicitly at the small satellite market, could be a boon for small sat proponents. Two dozen private ventures have emerged to compete for a $10 million purse put up by the St. Louis-based X-Prize foundation to be awarded to the first team to build a piloted vehicle and complete two suborbital flights within two weeks. X Prize Chairman Peter Diamandis said that while the primary market for the suborbital spacecraft is tourism, some X Prize contestants see an opportunity to launch small satellites with their vehicles. Any development that promises to change launch economics would be a positive development for the small satellite community, according to Futron's Thrash. Reprinted with permission from the Aug. 11 issue of Space News Comments: bberger@hq.space.com
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