The setback took place just weeks before the company planned to perform its first launch, based on comments by operators of SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands, where the test took place, and by executives with OHB, which owns nearly 65% of RFA.
“We wanted to launch within the next few weeks and months,” Stefan Brieschenk, co-founder and chief operating officer of RFA, said in a video posted a few days after the accident. That launch is now on indefinite hold as the company investigates the incident and builds a new stage, and the company confirmed it would not be ready to launch again until some time next year.
All eyes now are on Isar Aerospace and its Spectrum rocket. The company is testing the stages of the first Spectrum at Andøya Spaceport in Norway. “We have the entire vehicle already at the launch site,” said Stella Guillen, chief commercial officer of Isar Aerospace, during a panel at World Space Business Week Sept. 18.
If the stage tests are successful, she said all the company will need a license from Norwegian regulators for its launch. “We’re targeting for sure this year” for the launch, she said.
The conference showed there remained no lack of interest in small launch vehicles despite the technical difficulties and a market that has not grown as fast as predicted. Companies from France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom all discussed how they are pressing ahead with vehicles to serve small satellites.
Perhaps the most ambitious company is MaiaSpace, a spinoff of ArianeGroup that is working on a small launch vehicle whose booster is intended to be reusable. The vehicle can place 1,500 kilograms in sun-synchronous orbit in expendable mode and 500 kilograms if the booster is landed on a barge for reuse. The company is leveraging technologies like the ESA-backed Prometheus engine as well as the Themis project to test vertical landing technologies.
MaiaSpace announced Sept. 26 it won access to the former Soyuz pad in French Guiana and will spend several tens of millions of euros to refurbish it for use by its rocket. Launches could begin in 2026, although Yohann Leroy, chief executive of MaiaSpace, said during a visit to the company’s facilities outside Paris in September that the company would start with expendable launches and gradually test the systems needed for reusability over several launches.
It was clear at the conference, though, that the number of companies proposing small launch vehicle is far more than what the market can support, even with modest support planned by European governments. That’s particularly true given the launch rates some companies say they need to break even: Sirius Space Services, one French startup, said it needed to perform at least six launches a year of its Sirius line of rockets, while Latitude, another French startup, estimated it needed to do up to 20 launches of its Zephyr rocket.
The small size of European government demand for small launches will limit how many companies it can support. “Europe is one-fifth or one-sixth of the U.S.,” Leroy said of the size of the market, “and it is not anticipated that will change.”
That makes a shakeout in the European small launcher market inevitable. “I think there are a few conversations going on about consolidation. It’s a possibility,” said Guillen.
Some companies hope to win business from outside Europe despite strong competition from American companies like Rocket Lab, whose Electron dominates the commercial small launcher market. “Is there enough of a market in Europe? Probably not enough to sustain Orbex and me, but there is the whole world,” said Stanislas Maximin, chief executive of Latitude, appearing on a conference panel with U.K.-based Orbex, which is developing the Prime small launch vehicle.
Miguel Belló Mora, executive chairman of Orbex, shared his optimism. “I think there could be two or three companies in Europe easily.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-14 01:42:00
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