Space Exploration Technologies and EADS's Astrium offer launch services

FlightGlobal: Space Exploration Technologies and EADS's Astrium offer launch services
With a newly signed marketing agreement with California-based Space Exploration Technologies and the operation from next year of its new medium-lift Vega launcher, EADS's Astrium subsidiary is set to offer what it claims is a unique range of launch services.

The SpaceX deal gives Astrium exclusive rights up to 2015 to market in 28 European countries launches aboard the US company's Falcon 1e rocket, which is set to make its maiden flight next year from the US Army's Reagan test site at Kwajalein Atoll.

Falcon 1e is a heavy version of SpaceX's Falcon 1, which successfully launched a commercial payload in July to mark the company's entry to the launch market. The size of the Falcon 1e rocket is significant, as it will give Astrium the ability to offer to European institutional customers dedicated launches of very small satellites, of up to 500kg (1,100lb).


© Astrium
Ariane 5 is getting a small US cousin


Alain Charmeau, chief executive of Astrium Space Transportation, says there are no other commercial operators that can offer dedicated launches of very small satellites, and he cites three key advantages to customers who would otherwise have to rely on "piggyback" launches on much larger rockets, such as the 1,500kg-payload Vega or Russian Soyuz, which is also available through Astrium, or Astrium's heavylift workhorse, the 10t payload Ariane 5.

The first, he says, is that a dedicated launch should be much more affordable. Second, a dedicated launch gives the customer a fixed launch date of their choosing. And, third, a dedicated launch will put the satellite into the most suitable orbit - not one determined by the requirements of a larger piggyback partner.

SpaceX and Astrium have been discussing this marketing arrangement for more than a year, visiting each other's facilities in France, Germany and California. Good contact between working teams has established the start of a "very long co-operation" between two companies Charmeau sees as innovators.

FOR STARTERS

For now, he says, collaboration is strictly in marketing, with launches available from SpaceX locations at Cape Canaveral, Kwajalein and Vandenberg AFB in California.

No technical collaboration is part of the deal, but Charmeau readily concedes that the partnership could develop further.

Early signs are good. Charmeau says the first launch under the new marketing arrangement will come "very soon", although he is not as yet revealing any details. Astrium last September placed an order with SpaceX to launch a yet-to-be-identified Earth observation satellite.

His opposite number at SpaceX, Elon Musk, describes the agreement as "opening new doors for SpaceX". Musk, who made a fortune as co-founder of the PayPal internet payment system, subsequently founded SpaceX and later launched the Tesla all-electric sports car, boasts that the Falcon concept is to "provide breakthrough advances in reliability, cost, and time to launch".

This month also marks a milestone in the Vega project, with prime contractor ELV, of Colleferro in Italy, signed to deliver five launchers after the type's qualification flight.

Vega features three solid-propulsion stages and a fourth stage with a reignitable liquid rocket engine to offers payload capacity of 1,500kg into polar orbit at 700km (435 miles) altitude, for launch from Europe's French Guiana spaceport.