NASA Awards Contracts for Dedicated Cubesat
Hello
reader!
It
follows a note published on the day (10/14), in the site
"www.spacenews.com", noting that NASA
awards contracts for dedicated Cubesat.
Duda Falcão
NASA Awards Contracts for
Dedicated Cubesat
By Jeff Foust
October 14, 2015
Credit: Firefly Space Systems
Firefly's Alpha rocket.
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WASHINGTON — NASA announced Oct. 14 that is awarding more than $17
million in contracts for dedicated launches of cubesats to three companies,
none of whom have yet to place a single satellite into orbit.
As part of its Venture Class Launch Services program, NASA awarded
contracts for one launch each to Firefly Space Systems of Cedar Park, Texas;
Rocket Lab USA, headquartered in Los Angeles but with most of its engineering
staff based in New Zealand; and Virgin Galactic of Long Beach, California. The
combined value of the contracts was $17.1 million.
The program is designed to provide dedicated launches of groups of
cubesats. Such satellites today typically fly as secondary payloads, with
little control over their orbit and schedule. An existing NASA program, called
Education Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNa, arranges the launch of NASA and
university cubesats on NASA-sponsored missions with excess capacity.
Credit:
NASA
Garrett Skrobot.
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“Until today, cubesats have basically depended on other launch vehicles
to obtain their rides into space as piggybacks,” said Garrett Skrobot, head of
the ELaNa program, during an Oct. 14 press conference at the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida. “Now, we are riding first class.”
The three contracts, he said, will allow ELaNa to fly the 50 cubesats it
has yet to assign to other launches. Each launch will carry between 45 and 90
“units” of cubesats, where a unit is a cube 10 centimeters on a side. While
some cubesats are the size of a single unit, others are up to six units in
size.
All three companies are still developing their small satellite launch
vehicles, with first launches planned no sooner than early 2016. NASA officials
acknowledged at the press conference that this approach carries some risk,
since there is no guarantee that the vehicles will be ready as scheduled, or at
all.
“We’re definitely going after a high-risk approach here,” acknowledged
Mark Wiese, the flight projects office chief for NASA’s Launch Services
Program. “The cubesats represent that high risk tolerant payload, which are
perfect for the demonstration of a first flight.”
Wiese declined to state how many proposals the agency received in this
competition. Since none of the vehicles are currently flying, he said that NASA
judged the proposals on both their proposed cost and technical maturity. “We’re
excited that we’re able to award three,” he said. “It’s an outstanding
opportunity to get that first push for competition.”
Credit: Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab’s Electron small launch vehicle.
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Rocket Lab expects to be the first to launch. Peter Beck, chief
executive of the company, said its launch for NASA is scheduled for late 2016
or early 2017, and will be the fifth launch overall for the Electron small
launch vehicle. Beck said the company has an agreement for access to Pad 39C at
KSC, a new launch pad designed for small launch vehicles, and may use it for
the NASA mission.
Firefly Space Systems plans to carry out its NASA launch in March 2018,
said Maureen Gannon, vice president of business development. That launch will
come after a series of suborbital test flights of its Firefly Alpha rocket the
company plans to perform from Pad 39C starting in early 2017.
The Venture Class launch is Firefly Space Systems’ first contract. “We
have a lot of customers in negotiation, but this is the first formal contract
we’ve signed,” company co-founder P. J. King said in an Oct. 14 interview. The
launch will be the rocket’s first operational mission, which he said will also
likely use Pad 39C.
Credit: Virgin Galactic
LauncherOne.
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Virgin Galactic did not give an estimated date for its Venture Class
mission, but in a statement the company said that it would take place “just
before the start of our routine commercial operations” of its LauncherOne
system. NASA requires that the launches take place by April 2018.
Both Firefly Space Systems and Virgin Galactic are offering NASA a
discount over their list prices because the agency is an early customer.
Firefly sells Alpha launches for $8 million each, and Virgin Galactic sells
LauncherOne missions for “less than” $10 million each. However, the NASA
contract with Firefly is valued at $5.5 million, and the Virgin contract at
$4.7 million.
“Our price is relative to the level of risk the customer is willing to
undertake,” said Steven Isakowitz, president of Virgin Galactic. “In the case
of NASA, they wanted to fly on one of our early launches.”
By contrast, Rocket Lab, which sells Electron launches for $4.9 million
each, received a $6.9 million contract from NASA. Beck said the Electron will
be “fully commercial” by the time of the NASA mission. “Our price is a little
bit higher based on the extra requirements that are involved for a NASA mission
over a standard, basic commercial mission,” he said.
Source: website http://spacenews.com
Comentário: Pois é leitor,
enquanto o Brasil brinca de fazer Programa Espacial, as agencias espaciais
sérias do mundo como a NASA, buscam soluções para avançar cada vez mais em direção ao
futuro. Mas fazer o que? No governo americano existe um OBAMA, no Congresso
Americano, verdadeiros congressistas (apesar de ideologias políticas diferenciadas),
e na NASA leitor temos um competentíssimo Charles Bolden que dispensa apresentações, todos eles empenhados em construir o futuro de sua sociedade.
No Brasil temos uma presidentA que é uma completa debiloide que serve apenas de
fantoche (testa de ferro) para gente mal intencionada, um Congresso de moral e competência
extremamente discutíveis e uma agencia espacial comandada por um tremendo de um
banana conivente e mentiroso. O que se
pode esperar? Aproveitamos para agradecer publicamente ao
Dr. Otávio Durão pelo envio de mais este interessante artigo.
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