Spaceflight Industries
Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is a private aerospace company that specializes in the launch of secondary payloads ranging from 1 kg up to 300 kg micro satellites from a variety of space launch vehicles, such as Antares, Dnepr, Soyuz, and Falcon 9, as well as from the ISS.[1]
History
Spaceflight was founded in 2010 by Jason Andrews, with Curt Blake joining soon thereafter as SVP & General Counsel.[2] Prior to founding Spaceflight, Mr. Andrews worked at Kistler Aerospace and founded Andrews Space in 1999. Mr. Blake has previous experience at Microsoft, Starwave, SpaceDev, and GotVoice.[3] Spaceflight's mission is to fundamentally improve access to space by making launch more routine, more cost effective, and with standard flight interfaces.
Business Model
The traditional business model for accessing space is one satellite to one launch vehicle[4]. With the miniaturization of satellite hardware and improved communication capabilities, satellites have decreased in size and grown more powerful following Moore's Law. Spaceflight buys excess capacity from Commercial Launch Vehicles, sells the capacity to a number of "rideshare" secondary payloads, and integrates all of the secondary satellites as one discrete unit to the launch vehicle, providing a significant price discount to reach orbit compared to buying an entire launch vehicle.[5][6]
The company also began offering “dedicated rideshare,” a new launch alternative that lowers launch prices for organizations seeking access to space, maximizes utilization of the launch vehicle, and apportions cost based on schedule control and other service features. Lead customers pay for schedule control and other accoutrements of a traditional “primary” customer, but see their price reduced by including rideshare customers on the launch. Likewise, the traditional rideshare customers pay less because lead customers pay a disproportionate amount of the entire launch vehicle cost in order to retain schedule control.[7]
Spaceflight is in the process of developing its SHERPA family, a hosted payload and in space transportation solution that will help make launch of secondary payloads more cost effective to the correct orbit. SHERPA enables more access to space for small spacecraft and hosted payloads, and will be able to transport rideshare payloads to the Moon and Mars.[8][9]
Past and Future Missions
Spaceflight launched its first customers, NASA Ames and Planet Labs, in April 2013 on board Antares Orb-A-One mission and Soyuz 2.1a mission.[10] As of January 2016[update], Spaceflight has delivered 77 payloads over 11 launches, piggybacking on Soyuz 2, Antares, Dnepr, Cygnus and Dragon vehicles.[11]
In October 2015, Spaceflight Industries booked a launch slot on a Falcon 9 to deliver the 500-kg lunar lander built by SpaceIL for the Google Lunar X-Prize towards the end of 2017.[12] The rocket ride will be shared with a dozen other small payloads ranging from 50 kg to 575 kg.[13]
References
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- ↑ "Spaceflight Inc. Tapped To Find Rides for STP Satellite". Space News, 30 April 2012.
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- ↑ Rosenberg, Zach. "Spaceflight Inc unveils the Sherpa in-space tug". FlightGlobal, 7 May 2012
- ↑ "Five Spacecraft Launched By Two Launch Vehicles From Two Continents". Space News, 23 April 2013.
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