Virgin Galactic is planning a test campaign for its LauncherOne small satellite launch vehicle next year consisting of multiple trial-launches to pave the way for commercial missions.
The air-launched vehicle, first announced in 2012, has undergone some significant evolutions since inception, including a doubling of its payload performance, improved engines and switching carrier aircraft from WhiteKnightTwo to a Boeing [BA] 747-400 nicknamed Cosmic Girl. Since then, Virgin Galactic has also built and furnished a LauncherOne manufacturing plant in Long Beach, Calif., and signed a massive contract with OneWeb for 39 launches.
George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, told Defense Daily sister publication Via Satellite that the company’s goal for 2016 is to finish the development program for LauncherOne and start building the test launch vehicles, which will basically be identical to the operational version. He added that Virgin Galactic is creating a test plan with partner L-3 Communications [LLL], which is augmenting Cosmic Girl to support the launch vehicle.
Whitesides said engine development is proceeding very well with the Newton 3 main stage and Newton 4 upper stage engines. Virgin Galactic replaced the Newton 1 and Newton 2 engines, which were pressure-fed, with the newer pump-fed versions.
Will Pomerantz, vice president of special projects at Virgin Galactic, told Via Satellite the Newton 1 and Newton 2 were pathfinder engines used as part of LauncherOne’s development process. Whitesides said that the structural development program is also very well advanced, paving the way for the test campaign next year.
“We are going to start at a reasonable pace,” said Whitesides. “I think if we can get maybe three launches off in 2017 that would be a great start. Maybe we can do more…we’ll see, but definitely not just one. We want to do several in 2017.”
Virgin Galactic last year increased the payload performance for LauncherOne from 200 kg for missions to sun-synchronous orbits (SSO) to 400 kg while maintaining its price point at less than $10 million. The shift necessitated the new carrier aircraft, though the ground operational profile will remain the same.
Whitesides said Virgin Galactic’s new LauncherOne factory is “very active” now. Roughly 200 people are working on the program, with Virgin Galactic continuing to hire more people in preparation for rapid production.
“We now have all the factory equipment to produce our vehicles and we are working hard on that,” he said. “That includes an extensive composite manufacturing area with all the tools to build at a high rate. It includes an extensive computer numerical control (CNC) metal shop to build and form our propulsion systems, a full avionics facility, and also a full suite of quality and verification systems. We also have a large assembly area since we aspire to be building at a high rate fairly soon.”
Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne facility is capable of producing up to 20 to 30 rockets a year. Whitesides said the company has more control over its launch schedule because of the decision to take an air-launched approach. He said the goal is to reach a regular launch cadence of two, or potentially three missions a month, flying regularly out of Mojave, Calif., along with other places.
In addition to OneWeb, Virgin Galactic won a Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) contract from NASA last year. Both customers have target launch dates in 2018. Virgin Galactic also recently secured a letter of intent (LOI) from Millennium Space Systems for using LauncherOne, Virgin Galactic mentioned GeoOptics, Spaceflight Inc., Planetary Resources and Skybox Imaging (now Terra Bella) as interested customers when it announced LauncherOne in 2012.
Whitesides declined to say how many customers Virgin Galactic has for the launch vehicle, but described the missions as very diverse.
“We have signed some other deals that we will be making public when our customer wants them to,” he said. “We have tremendous interest.”
A guiding reason for Virgin Galactic’s decision to upscale LauncherOne to 400 kg was to capture a larger swath of the small satellite market. Whitesides said Virgin Galactic wanted to envelope the entire market from the 1U CubeSat to several-hundred kg spacecraft that is larger in both mass and volume. He also noted a trend where small satellite companies tend to grow their spacecraft buses as they develop additional generations of satellites.
Whitesides said he anticipates LauncherOne will start with greater appeal to the commercial sector, but will then grow to be relatively evenly used between commercial and government customers. Though the commercial sector is much more active when it comes to small satellites today, he said there is evidence the government sector is actively evaluating how to use small satellites, creating an even larger market for dedicated small satellite launch services.
“What I believe we will see—and what I think we are already seeing—is various government customers, whether they are civil or otherwise, watching small satellites and really asking the question: ‘What missions can we accomplish for one-tenth the cost or one-one hundredth the cost [of bigger spacecraft],” Whitesides said. “It may not be quite as exquisite as the existing platforms, but if we can do 80 percent of the mission for one-twentieth the cost, that’s a pretty good trade.”
In the long term, Virgin Galactic is considering ways to further inject reusability into the LauncherOne program. By employing a carrier aircraft, the air-launch system is already semi-reusable, but the first version of the rocket is expendable.
Whitesides said he is a believer in reusability and that there are ideas within Virgin Galactic on how to further incorporate this principle later on in LauncherOne’s timeline.
“The things you can do with a small launch vehicle are a little bit different from what you can do with a large launch vehicle,” Whitesides said. “You have more options, so there are some exciting options that are possible with a reusable small launch vehicle.”
This story was originally published at Via Satellite, a Defense Daily sister publication covering the global satellite communications (SATCOM) industry.