Note that this is the satellite contract that goes with the FH contract from post 34. Both contracts are contingent on OverHorizon getting financing.
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Note that this is the satellite contract that goes with the FH contract from post 34. Both contracts are contingent on OverHorizon getting financing.
e-FTW
New electron smell
To SpaceX!
Considering the $69 million launch cost, how could they not... A West Coast launch in 2021.
NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Asteroid Redirect Test
Considering the $69 million launch cost, how could they not... A West Coast launch in 2021.
NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Asteroid Redirect Test
NASA said:
Excellent. Let’s meetup at Vandenburg in June 2021 and watch the launch live!
A South Korean military satellite for SpaceX.
South Korea to launch own military satellite in November
South Korea to launch own military satellite in November
And another one for NASA. A very lightweight satellite but probably going on a reused booster with that low launch cost. Or possibly approved for a rideshare with some other satellite...
Jeff Foust on Twitter
Jeff Foust on Twitter
$50M for 300kg to LEO?
By my math that's pretty close to the typical you-get-the-whole-rocket $62M or whatever price that sends 5500kg to GTO and I don't know how many thousands of kg to LEO. For reference, the Spaceflight list price for 300kg to LEO is $8M.
To be fair it is an equatorial inclination [which most people don't want to go to] so I could see that making it a little more difficult to find a partner and thus more expensive, and certainly NASA is just beginning their "maybe we should try not to waste so much money" journey and thus don't yet have the capacity to trust a fully commercial SpaceX mission, but...that's still a crazy price delta.
Anyway, signs point toward SSO-A souring SpaceX on a third party aggregator, and given SpaceX's internal aggregation on the recent FH it wouldn't surprise me if, as you suggest, SpaceX just tries to fill up whatever space they can on the vehicle. If we use Spaceflight's list prices as a WAG, it wouldn't take too many satellites in the 50-300kg range to bring the revenue to $62M+ even if its way under capacity. There's also an outside chance SpaceX will just fill up the rest of the mass capacity with Starlinks, though given that the lowest Starlink inclination is over 50deg and a Florida equatorial launch sends it at ~28deg, there's going to be a pretty big stupid tax on mass to go the 'wrong' way and then make that huge inclination turn to equatorial.
SpaceX may have been approved to use a third, fourth, or even fifth launch of a booster and reused fairings. If so, then I can see that extra low price justified. I'd expect the okay with some other payload too though. Since SpaceX and NASA have such a good working relationship, I could also see a promise of a larger payload in the near future. As in "give me a good deal on this one and I'll make sure you get this sweet upcoming launch deal."
It's both crazy high and crazy low. You wouldn't normally use something as capable as a Falcon 9 for a launch like this, so it's very expensive compared to a much smaller rocket like Electron (note: haven't checked if that is capable or not, but there are others out there that could certainly do it). But it's also very cheap for a Falcon 9 launch of any kind. Maybe they get the discount for allowing piggyback loads (more Starlink?).
This particular launch will actually be quite tricky because of the final orbit of the satellite. So it ends up being a good thing it is light. SpaceX couldn't pull off the maneuver needed to get to the equatorial inclination with something a lot heavier according to the aerospace people on SpaceX Facebook.
Very very napkin calculations performed by someone with suspect Maths (me...) suggest that A Thing would need ~3.7km/s delta v to make the equatorial LEO inclination turn from 500km. While not exactly apples to apples, That Thing needs 7.2km/s delta v to get from the pad to 500km. So--while again not actually correct because there's a whole bunch of energy expended to lift a launcher vertically off a pad and turn it sideways that I'm ignoring--we can do a hand-wavey bounding that says the inclination change requires less than ~half again what was expended to get The Thing into orbit.
If we magically make that a unitless ratio (two-parts launch to one-part inclination change) and apply it to a very WAG of 12T capacity to [email protected] for a F9 RTLS, we can super duper squint and say a F9 RTLS could do something like 8T to 500km equatorial (because the other 4T would be 'used up' by the inclination change).
Obviously that's exactly wrong, but even with a heavy 'bxr ignored a lot of stuff' correction factor we're still looking at many tons of capability to a 500km equatorial orbit. At a bare minimum, I'd contest it is very safe (and very conservative) to say IXPE is at least an order of magnitude lighter than F9's capability for this mission.
If we magically make that a unitless ratio (two-parts launch to one-part inclination change) and apply it to a very WAG of 12T capacity to [email protected] for a F9 RTLS, we can super duper squint and say a F9 RTLS could do something like 8T to 500km equatorial (because the other 4T would be 'used up' by the inclination change).
Obviously that's exactly wrong, but even with a heavy 'bxr ignored a lot of stuff' correction factor we're still looking at many tons of capability to a 500km equatorial orbit. At a bare minimum, I'd contest it is very safe (and very conservative) to say IXPE is at least an order of magnitude lighter than F9's capability for this mission.
So SpaceX lost the FH Ovzon launch to Ariane. The speculation is that Ariane gave them a sweetheart deal.
But SpaceX just gained another one with Astranis’s first commercial satellite. Details here:
Milestone Achieved! SpaceX to Launch Astranis’s First Commercial Satellite Into Orbit As Early As Next Year
But SpaceX just gained another one with Astranis’s first commercial satellite. Details here:
Milestone Achieved! SpaceX to Launch Astranis’s First Commercial Satellite Into Orbit As Early As Next Year
I'm sure you've read this already, but:
SpaceX loses Falcon Heavy customer Ovzon to Arianespace - SpaceNews.com
“It’s nothing political or anything like that, it’s not that we don’t trust SpaceX — it’s just that we could get a better deal in cost and time and so on from Ariane at this time,”
Certainly the price is always going to be better on an A5/A6 lower vs FH (speculation was that the sweetheart deal was actually the FH price...), and certainly the schedule for Ariane is more reliable than FH, so both of those factors make sense. The latter is especially important because this is Ovzon's first satellite--their on orbit capacity is currently just leased transponders, so having your own asset to do with what you will is really going to be a step function in revenue for them.
What would be most interesting is insight as to whether there's any there there with "...and so on". The biggest "and so on" that I could imagine makes any difference is some kind of follow on deal, but I suppose there could be some hand-shakey agreements pertaining to other and/or future system elements with ESA/EADS/CNES or even Airbus...? Pure speculation on that though.
Ariane manifest is full and consistent, the reliability of the service is high, and their experience transitioning A4 to A5 over a number of years will certainly inform their plan to transition from 5 to 6 over a number of years [with minimal impact to launch frequency], since in Ariane's case the new products were direct replacements for the old products.
FH manifest is in flux and is very light, and in fact FH's whole existence is still unclear. Its service level is not [more or less] a direct overlap, but rather it is a new class in Falcon capability, and [as noted in previous threads] there aren't a lot of real payloads that will benefit from its capability, especially in the near term. Plus, the parallel [and more prioritized] development of Starship could very well obsolete FH before FH really gets legs.
Especially considering that launch vehicles are often purchased 2-3 years out, when you sum that with all the above the bottom line is that you're more likely to launch on Ariane 5/6 when you want than on FH when you want.
Somewhat related to the bigger picture topic, the details of the Ovzon switch from FH to A5/6 would certainly be interesting relative to simply switching from FH to F9.
Unfortunately, like the whole launcher industry, Ariane is subject to the same kind of delays as SpaceX. Launcher production anomalies put the brakes on campaign progress, long call-ups (I think everyone is pretty much 90 days from launch...?) make it hard to reshuffle the near term manifest, and payload availability schedules ultimately drive everything anyway.
While FH is a different beast (as noted above), I'd say its a wash as to whether F9 or A5 has a schedule advantage. The high F9 launch frequency (~20/yr) theoretically gives them more options to rearrange the manifest, A5's low launch frequency (~6/yr) ends up giving them months of 'free' time between launches to resolve anomalies without pushing the manifest. A downside for Ariane, most A5 launches are dual manifest GTO which adds complexity to scheduling because a) they have to wait for two satellites to be ready before they launch a rocket and b) its not always possible to shuffle the deck of who's going on what rocket because not every big/upper and small/lower sat combination is practical.
SpaceX just announced preset guaranteed monthly small sat ride share. $1 million for a 200kg sat, $5k per additional kg.
SpaceX/smallsat
SpaceX/smallsat
That's already been shown and discussed:
SpaceX Announces Falcon 9 SmallSat Rideshare Program
However, SpaceX has gotten their first customer for the smallsat program.
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