ESA short 16,572kg in launch capacity
Is this the perfect opportunity for a maturing European launch startup market?
Issue 73. Subscribers 3,007.
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ESA short 16,572kg in launch capacity
In September, the European Space Agency published a list of missions that had been developed under one of its programmes with a planned launch between 2024 and 2026 that were yet to secure a ride to space. The list is a mix between ESA-owned, ESA/private, and ESA/public missions. In total, the combined mass of the 49 payloads is 16,572 kilograms.
Ariane 6, from all appearances, will have entered commercial service by 2025. However, the first 10 to 15 flights of the vehicle are already blocked out, with the payloads on this list unlikely to take precedence over what is already on the launch manifest.
Vega C has a similarly full launch manifest. There are rideshare service missions planned, but with the vehicle likely only returning to commercial operations well into 2025, I can’t see a rideshare mission taking precedence over more pressing payloads. There is a Space Rider mission on the list, which I’m not sure could be launched aboard anything but Vega C, as its service module is a modified version of the vehicle's upper stage. As a result, the Space Rider SROC (Space Rider Observer Cube) mission may have to wait. Either that or the 12U CubeSat demonstrator will have to be pulled from Space Rider altogether. This could be an opportunity for a European OTV provider like D-Orbit to figure out how to carry out the mission.
The Vega C gamble
Vega C has secured ESA launch contracts because the agency appears to believe that as long as it throws enough funding Avio's way, eventually, they'll get a reliable vehicle. I find this assumption somewhat flawed, given the recent track record of Avio.
Over the last ten missions across Vega and Vega C flights, three have ended in failure, giving the system a 70% success rate. And yes, that number doesn’t tell the whole story. Launch vehicles entering commercial service often have a lower success rate before teams come to grips with the idiosyncrasies of a vehicle. However, even if you remove the failures of Vega C, the last ten flights of Vega still only have an 80% success rate. And that’s ten flights well into the vehicle’s commercial operations when it should be at its most reliable.
In the last two years, whenever I see that Avio has won another launch contract, I am always inclined to ask if they would have secured that contract if the company were just another commercial outfit bidding on these missions. And by giving these contracts to Avio seemingly without any competition being considered, are ESA not just failing to foster the creation of additional launch capacity but actively hindering this process?
The opportunity
Including the Space Rider mission, there are four missions that come in over 2,000 kilograms, meaning that it is unlikely there will be any launch capacity in Europe that will be able to service these missions between 2024 and the end of 2026. Of the 27 ESA-owned missions, 25 are payloads of between 8 and 150 kilograms. Payloads that include a private component account for 19 missions, 16 of which are 500 kilograms or under, with 13 being 80 kilograms or under. The three missions that include a public component, which would, for example, involve the cooperation of a university or college, have payloads with a mass of between one and four kilograms.
The vast majority of the payloads would be deployed into low Earth orbit. There are three payloads destined for GTO, which excludes a 1,050-kilogram satellite from contention. There are also three lunar missions and one deep space mission. These missions are, however, all small, involving payloads of no more than 26 kilograms. As a result, they are not completely out of the realm of possibility for a small launch vehicle.
So, between 2024 and the end of 2026, ESA has 44 missions with a total mass of 2,622 kilograms that it needs to procure launch services to deploy. The least construction way it could go about solving this problem is to stick them on a Vega C or Ariane 6 rideshare missions and wave away potentially years of delay to those missions. It’s even possible that a portion of these payloads could fly as hitchhikers aboard the final Vega mission in 2024. Again, not very constructive. It would just be more patronage to a company that deserves none, in my opinion. Then we have the launch startups.
The European launch startup scene is on the verge of maturing. Companies like Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar Aerospace, and Orbex are working towards a maiden flight, with 2024 likely to see at least one or two make that initial attempt. That ensures that come 2025 and 2026, these vehicles will be in a space to be able to service ESA’s 2,622-kilogram launch capacity shortfall.
If you examine the three launch vehicles that are most likely to be ready to launch in 2024, you get RFA ONE, Spectrum, and Prime. There are one or two others, but in terms of funding and technical progress, these three are certainly the most likely.
RFA ONE is capable of deploying 1,350 kilograms into low Earth orbit. As a result, with the aid of the company’s Redshift OTV, the vehicle could handle the full capacity over three flights. This would certainly not be the best use of this opportunity. However, imagine, for a second, if before the end of the year, ESA guaranteed even 20% of these missions to these three launch startups and maybe two or three others that look as if they’ll be ready to go before the end of 2026. It would certainly not mean a huge uptick in profit for each company individually, but it would signal to private investment that the agency is ready to give these companies the most significant sign of institutional support: launch contracts.
Conclusion
In 2020, ESA launched Boost!. The programme aimed to foster new European commercial space transportation services through small funding grants and technical assistance. The programme has, by all measures, punched far above its weight, with the companies that were involved in the programme able to attract five euros in private investment for every one euro awarded by the Boost! Programme. However, when your total spend over two years is just €39.79 million, the impact you can have is limited. If you want to know more about the Boost! programme, I did a deep dive in July, which you can find here.
Instead of small financial commitments, I am a firm believer that institutional launch contracts would have been a more significant bargaining chip for these companies to use to raise funding from private backers. In an ideal world, the missions on this list should have already been committed to the most promising European launch startups. We lost years, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still an opportunity.