PARIS — The three firms with multibillion-dollar contracts to launch Amazons’s Project Kuiper constellation say they’re committed to deploying those satellites on schedule despite delays in the event of their vehicles.
Amazon announced contracts in April 2022 with Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance for as much as 83 launches of the Ariane 6, Latest Glenn and Vulcan Centaur rockets to deploy the three,236-satellite constellation. The contracts combined represent the biggest single industrial launch order to this point.
Amazon made the commitments although not one of the vehicles had launched on the time of the contract signing. All three vehicles have suffered extensive development delays and still have yet to try a single launch. The contracting process recently triggered a lawsuit by a pension fund that’s an Amazon shareholder against the corporate’s board of directors.
During a Sept. 11 panel at Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week here, executives of the three launch firms said they’re getting closer to their vehicles’ first launches.
Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, noted that the corporate had planned the inaugural Vulcan Centaur launch for this spring but delayed it after an incident during a test of a Centaur upper stage where hydrogen fuel leaked from the stage and ignited. The corporate said in June it could modify the Centaur to extend the thickness of a part of the stage to correct the issue, pushing that inaugural launch to a while within the fourth quarter.
The substitute Centaur that will likely be used on the primary launch is in “final assembly,” he said, having passed a pressure test that qualifies the changes made to correct the issue seen in the sooner test. “We’ll be shipping the vehicle out to the pad in November and I expect to fly the Vulcan in December.”
Jarrett Jones, senior vp for Latest Glenn at Blue Origin, said the corporate remains to be working towards a primary launch of that rocket in 2024 but didn’t offer a more precise timeframe. The primary flight vehicle will arrive at the mixing facility by the top of the yr, followed by integrated hot-fire tests.
Blue Origin is planning “multiple” launches of Latest Glenn in 2024, but he didn’t disclose details in regards to the manifest. “We intend to fulfill our contractual requirements in ’24,” he said. One among those contracted launches could be for NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars smallsat mission, currently scheduled to launch in August 2024.
Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, reiterated comments made by officials at a Sept. 4 briefing where they said the European Space Agency would set a goal launch period for Ariane 6 after a long-duration hot-fire test of the core stage planned for early October. That test will follow a successful short-duration test Sept. 5 and an upper-stage firing test Sept. 1.
That inaugural flight will come a while in 2024, but he declined to be more specific. “Things are progressing thoroughly. We’re very completely satisfied,” he said. Ariane 6, like each Latest Glenn and Vulcan Centaur, had once planned initial launches in 2020.
Ramping up for Kuiper
For all three firms, Amazon is their largest industrial customer and maybe their most impatient one. Under terms of its Federal Communication Commission license, the corporate must deploy not less than half of the constellation by July 2026, giving it lower than three years to launch greater than 1,800 satellites. The remaining satellites should be in orbit by July 2029.
All three executives said they’re working to ramp up production and launch operations with a view to meet Amazon’s deadline. “We’ll deliver for Kuiper as quick as possible after the maiden flight,” Israël said. Those launches is not going to begin with the second Ariane 6 flight, he said, but will start “quickly,” intermixed with launches for institutional customers like ESA.
Lots of the Kuiper launches will use an upgraded version of the Ariane 6’s solid-fuel boosters that may increase its payload performance, allowing each launch to hold as many as 40 satellites. “We’re heading in the right direction for Kuiper.”
Blue Origin also doesn’t plan to fly Kuiper satellites on the initial launches of Latest Glenn, Jones said. The corporate has 4 boosters in various stages of development, each designed to be reused as much as 25 times. He said the corporate was also taking a look at other ways to double its launch capability that he didn’t go into. “We’re not concerned about meeting the contractual requirements for Kuiper.”
Bruno said ULA was taking a three-part approach to build up its launch capability. One step involves infrastructure improvements to extend production of vehicles, an investment he suggested bumped into the billions of dollars.
A second step, he said, is that ULA will start launching Kuiper satellites on Atlas rockets using a contract it previously signed with ULA. Nine Atlas rockets are allocated to Kuiper, including one expected to launch in the following month carrying two prototype satellites that had been slated to fly on the primary Vulcan launch.
A 3rd step is stockpiling Vulcan hardware, like boosters, to permit launches to happen rapidly once the vehicle is in service. “When the Kuiper satellites come our way, we’ve already got whole rockets in inventory,” he said.
Other vehicles in development
Three other firms on the panel wouldn’t have Amazon launch contracts but are working to get latest vehicles to orbit.
Iwao Igarashi, vp and general manager of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said the investigation into the failed inaugural H3 launch in March was accomplished last month. On that flight, the rocket’s first stage appeared to perform as expected however the second stage did not ignite.
“We defined the corrective actions and a few of them were applied to the H-2A launch vehicle last week,” he said, a reference to a successful Sept. 6 launch of an H-2A carrying the XRISM X-ray astronomy satellite and SLIM lunar lander. The subsequent H3 launch is planned before the top of the yr.
Relativity Space retired its Terran 1 small launch vehicle after a single, unsuccessful flight in March so it could concentrate on its larger Terran R, now planned for 2026. The experience from Terran 1, said Josh Brost, senior vp at Relativity, “gives us that confidence to pivot on to this much larger launch system.”
Tom Ochinero, vp of business sales at SpaceX, reiterated the comments made by the corporate and the Federal Aviation Administration Sept. 8 in regards to the status of Starship, now that the FAA has closed its investigation into the failed first launch in April.
“From a vehicle readiness perspective, we’re almost there,” he said, as the corporate works with the FAA on an updated launch license. “We’re real close and we hope we are able to have a cool, successful test flight real soon.”