Virgin Galactic recently revealed “LauncherOne,” a new air-launched rocket specifically designed to deliver satellites weighing less than 500 pounds into orbit.
The company, owned by Virgin Group and aabar Investments PJS, said in a statement that commercial flights of this new orbital launch vehicle are expected to begin by 2016. Virgin Galactic also said four private companies have already put down deposits as future LauncherOne customers, expressing their intent to purchase a total of several dozen launches. Those companies are Skybox Imaging, GeoOptics Inc., Spaceflight, Inc., and Planetary Resources, Inc. Virgin Galactic Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Steve Isakowitz said in an email he couldn’t specify exactly how many launches.
Skybox Imaging is a satellite imagery company, GeoOptics is developing non-imagery remote sensing satellites, Spaceflight is an aggregator and integrator of small satellites while Planetary Resources is an asteroid mining venture, Virgin Galactic said in a statement.
Virgin Galactic also said two manufacturers of small satellites, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and Sierra Nevada Space Systems, would create optimized satellite designs to match LauncherOne’s performance specifications. This would allow customers to maximize their capability and minimize the time to market their satellites, Virgin Galactic said.
Virgin Galactic said LauncherOne will be a two-stage vehicle capable of carrying up to 500 pounds to orbit for prices below $10 million. The rocket will be launched from Virgin Galactic’s proven WhiteKnightTwo, the uniquely capable aircraft also designed to carry SpaceShipTwo aloft.
Isakowitz said there is potential for launches “at a rate of well over one per month” just to support the four customers who have already signed on. He also said Virgin Galactic’s work with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) program is driven by a requirement to accommodate at least 36 flights per year for ALASA alone. According to a notice on Federal Business Opportunities, ALASA seeks to develop a complete launch vehicle requiring no recurring maintenance nor support and no specific integration to prepare for launch.
Isakowitz said ALASA is “intrinsically linked” with DARPA’s Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements (SeeMe) program, which aims to give mobile individual U.S. warfighters access to on-demand, space-based tactical information in remote and beyond line-of-sight conditions. DARPA said if SeeMe is successful, it will provide small squads and individual teams the ability to receive timely imagery of their specific overseas location directly from a small satellite with the press of a button—something DARPA said is not currently possible from military or small satellites.