Launchers Address Rocket Debuts, Ramping up Capacity, and Space Stewardship

The global launch market is in a state of flux, as the market awaits delayed heavy-lift vehicles and deals with recent mission failures. One major question is the potential sale of United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, after Ars Technica reported earlier this month the launcher is for sale.

The anticipated SATELLITE launchers panel did not give any update on this question — ULA CEO Tory Bruno did not comment on the potential sale during the panel on March 15. But he shared a few details about the Vulcan Centaur’s upcoming first launch. Asked if he was confident that Vulcan will launch soon he said simply “Yes.”

Bruno shared there were issues with the rocket that at one point looked ready to launch until engineers noticed something that didn’t look right. “We pulled it off the pad, took it apart and we put another engine on. We are now confident that we understand [the issue] as unit to unit variability. We're about halfway, or a little bit more than halfway, through the qualification.”

ULA now expects to fly in May, with a second launch possible in June, Bruno said.

There are also a lot of eyes on Arianespace as the launcher is working through its final Ariane 5 missions, awaiting the first launch of the Ariane 6. The company experienced a setback when its second Vega C mission failed in December. Arianespace recently released results of the investigation into the mission and hopes to fly the rocket again by the end of 2023.

“For us it’s been a year of transition and change,” Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël said. “We are now focused on a successful return to flight for Vega C.”

Richard French, Rocket Lab’s director of Business Development and Strategy for Space Systems, appeared on the panel just before the company executed its second mission from Virginia on March 16.

“We're really working to hit our stride with Electron with 15 launches planned for this year. There are alot of great things like that in the pipeline,” French said.

In the Rocket Lab factory in Long Beach, some of the largest advanced manufacturing machines in the world are being installed to expand their manufacturing capabilities for the Electron and Neutron rocket engines. “We've got a large business and spacecraft components and integrated satellite systems, and when we combine them with launch work, we can bring the lowest total cost of ownership to customers,” French said.

SpaceX, by far the most active launcher, is targeting 100 launches in 2023 after closing out 2022 with a record 61 launches. The most exciting thing that's coming up this year for SpaceX is its Starship demonstration flight.

“We're so close to this. That should be happening very shortly,” said Tom Ochinero, senior vice president of Commercial Business SpaceX.

Ochinero then dipped into SpaceX’s history for future prognostications. “In the past three years, we were in the 20s,” Ochinero said, speaking about the number of launches. “We tripled them this year, and we're not limited to just 100 launches. With three active launchpads, and three separate teams, and a kind of fully mature reusability campaign of refurbishments, everything's really dialed in at this point. Currently, we're on track and looking forward to setting a new record for usability.”

SpaceX engineers have also determined that reusing boosters could go beyond the current limit of 10, he said, and maybe reach up to 25 times. “Those decisions are made along the way.”

Blue Origin did not give a target date for the first flight of its New Glenn rocket, but Ariane Cornell, vice president of Commercial Orbital, Astronaut, and International Sales for Blue Origin highlighted the recent NASA award as the agency selected Blue Origin’s New Glenn for the expected late 2024 Escapade launch.

“We're very proud to be given that special trust of NASA,” Cornell said. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) are a dual-spacecraft mission to study ion and sputtered escape from Mars.

Cornell also dealt with explaining what happened with New Shepard during the 23rd flight of the rocket, as it blew up in a fireball during an uncrewed launch in September. “We are still closing on the investigation,” Cornell said. “We're working very closely with the FAA on the mishap investigation. We're going into very deep, deep detail on that. As we ramped up New Shepard to fly payloads and then people in 2021, we've always had safety as our number one priority. We'll certainly fly that vehicle when we're ready. We'll have more details.”

With all the build and development activity from these companies, there is an expectation that the number of rocket launches will ramp up, calling into review a balance of risk, and caution.

“We have some challenges,” French said. “Rockets are hard. “Luckily we are building on a very strong foundation and materials system that we're using with carbon composites and experts in scaling up to larger structures. We're making great progress on much of the other infrastructure that we need, whether it's avionics, or flight software, which is actually quite far ahead,” he said. “I don't think I can give you numbers or prognostication about ramping up. I can say that we're tooling up and developing to what we expect the market demand to be,” he said.

The enthusiasm about thousands of satellites in space should be tempered by rules, according to Bruno. “As odd as it sounds to have an industry guy sit up here and say this, I will say we need regulation. And enforcement. Because the common space domain is precious to all of us. It's not like anything here. Because if terrestrially, a ship is in trouble, it leaves the domain when it sinks. When an airplane gets in trouble, it leaves the domain unfortunately by coming down to the ground. That's not the case in the space domain.” VS