WASHINGTON — Satellite operator Intelsat has signed an agreement with Relativity Space for multiple launches of that company’s Terran R reusable launch vehicle under development.
The 2 corporations announced Oct. 11 that they had signed a multi-year, multi-launch agreement for Terran R launches of Intelsat satellites starting no sooner than 2026, the yr Relativity currently projects Terran R making its debut. The businesses didn’t disclose the variety of launches included within the agreement or the time span of the agreement.
The businesses also didn’t disclose the worth of the agreement, although Relativity Space said it now has a backlog of greater than $1.8 billion from nine customers. The corporate said in April it had a backlog of $1.65 billion.
Intelsat, in a press release, praised Relativity for an “modern design and production process” for Terran R, within the words of Luc Froeliger, senior vice chairman of space systems. Nevertheless, the corporate didn’t go into details about why it procured multiple launches of a vehicle that remains to be about three years from its first launch.
One possibility is concerns about availability of launch given growing demand, particularly from low Earth orbit broadband constellations, and a supply of existing and latest vehicles that just isn’t maintaining. “The space industry clearly requires more commercially competitive, diversified and disruptive launch capability,” Tim Ellis, chief executive of Relativity, said within the statement. “Relativity is developing Terran R as a customer-focused reusable launch vehicle to unravel this need.”
That demand was one reason Relativity decided in April to discontinue its Terran 1 small launch vehicle that failed to achieve orbit in its only launch in March. The corporate argued that the “biggest market opportunity” was on the heavy end of the market, which the Terran R, which might place as much as 5,500 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit while recovering the primary stage, can serve.
“We see this big gap between supply and demand” on the heavy end of the launch market, said Josh Brost, senior vice chairman at Relativity Space, during a panel at World Satellite Business Week a month ago, adding that the corporate expected that imbalance to last “for a really very long time.”
He said the experience from the Terran 1, including build up a team and key technologies like additive manufacturing, will translate to the Terran R. “It led to us learning how do you design a system, how do you use a system, how do you qualify it, all of which feeds into Terran R to provide us a significantly better understanding of how long is it going to take for us to develop this much larger launch system that’s rather more capable.”
Relativity has provided few updates on the event of Terran R for the reason that April announcement it was discontinuing the Terran 1, which also revealed design changes within the Terran R for the reason that company first announced plans to develop it in 2021.
Ellis, in a prerecorded presentation aired on the 26th Annual International Mars Society Convention Oct. 8, said the corporate was making good progress on the Terran R. “We’re 100% focused on Terran R. Of our 1,000-person team or so we now have now, everybody is working on Terran R and the 3D-printing technology that supports Terran R,” he said.
He said Relativity expects to finish a preliminary design review of Terran R near the top of this yr or early next yr, and has recently performed its 500th engine test. “We’re heading in the right direction for first launch in 2026,” he said.
Ellis explained that one reason for pressing ahead with Terran R was a scarcity of competition for SpaceX within the launch market. “Eight years after founding Relativity, there remains to be not a second great business launch company,” he said. “It’s clear on the business side there remains to be probably not an obvious second player that’s just as quickly moving, low price, and has a really capable launch vehicle within the heavy-lift payload class.”