Because Virgin Orbit’s mission turns the spotlight on the risk of European launchers
While the United Kingdom celebrates its first launch into space from European soil with Virgin Orbit, ESA's number one warns: "Europe's independent access to space is at risk"
Virgin Orbit has made the first launch from European soil into space.
The aerospace company headed by billionaire Richard Branson has carried out the first ever launch from the UK, from Spaceport Cornwall, thus transforming the Cornish city of Newquay into the country's first spaceport.
The Start me Up mission deploys nine satellites in orbit via Cosmic Girl, a Boeing 747-400 modified thanks to the Branson company's LauncherOne.
On the occasion of the UK's space milestone becoming the first country to launch commercial satellites from Western Europe, European Space Agency (ESA) director-general Josef Aschbacher has issued a warning, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
"Europe's independent access to space will be at risk without a radical reform of the development of satellite launch services", thundered the number one of ESA.
According to Aschbacher, a market-driven approach is needed for the European industry to ensure that the region continues to have a competitive sovereign launch capacity. This would mean giving the private sector more power to decide where and how Europe's launch systems are built. "Europe must regain this competitiveness on the launcher market that we don't have today," said the ESA director in an interview.
In addition, the new spaceport would offer Europe the ability to launch smaller satellites at a critical time after the war in Ukraine cut off access to the use of Russian Soyuz rockets. ESA's Ariane 6 launcher, designed to carry large satellites, has also been delayed. Furthermore, Aschbacher's comments come just three weeks after the failure of the first commercial flight of Vega C, the updated version of the European Vega launcher built by Avio in its Italian facilities in Colleferro.
Without forgetting that the United Kingdom thus surpasses Italy and the Grottaglie spaceport is not yet active.
THE FAILURE OF VEGA C
The loss of the VV22 mission of Vega C, the small-medium size European launcher produced in Italy by Avio, has highlighted the critical issues in the launcher sector. The latter guarantees autonomous access to space, one of the pillars of the space strategies of the European Union and of other major players, such as the United States, China, Russia, Japan and India.
Vega C, which made its maiden flight in July, has been central to Europe's ambition to maintain independent access to space. The light launcher manufactured by Avio is expected to play an increasingly crucial role in Europe's access to space after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine forced Arianespace to stop using Russian Soyuz launchers and amid continued delays of the larger Ariane 6, already three years late.
But now the flights of the Vega C launcher are suspended until the commission of inquiry establishes the causes of the failure of the first commercial flight and proposes solutions.
THE CRISIS IN THE PITCHING SECTOR
“We are facing a crisis in the launcher industry,” Aschbacher said, reports the FT . “This is bad enough, but wasting a crisis is even worse. Now is the time to really look at how we want to build the boot system going forward."
“If industry takes responsibility, then [they] can organize as they wish and where they see fit,” Aschbacher said. This approach should be negotiated and agreed between ESA member states, including the UK, Switzerland and Canada, and industry.
Aschbacher hopes for a NASA-style reform for the European Space Agency, in which it buys defined services instead of managing the development of systems which are then marketed by Arianespace, explains the Financial Times . Such market-driven reforms led to the development of SpaceX.
“We have to have the commercial sector through a competitive process, providing launch solutions where the ESA is the customer,” he said. Like NASA, the agency could still provide technological support. But it would serve as a "goal customer" for private sector companies, as NASA has done for both crew and cargo services for the International Space Station.
THE UNITED KINGDOM LEADING WITH VIRGIN ORBIT
Aschbacher's comments came as the UK geared up to become the first Western European nation to launch small satellites from its own soil.
The war in Ukraine has highlighted the importance for tactical military purposes of smaller satellites, such as those launched from Newquay spaceport, which can enter low orbit at much shorter notice than larger ones, Reuters points out.
In the night between 9 and 10 January 2023 Cosmic Girl, the Boeing 747 of Virgin Orbit, took off from Spaceport Cornwall, in Cornwall, carrying LauncherOne at high altitude, the launcher which, once released from the mother plane, thanks to a powerful rocket engine carries the load of satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Since the UK is a member of ESA (even after Brexit), Aschbacher stressed that UK players would be eligible for the micro-launch competition. Closer competition for the Italian launcher Vega.
GROTTAGLI SPACEPORT OUTPASSED
The Start Me mission marks a series of firsts: first ever orbital launch from the UK, first international launch for Virgin Orbit, and first commercial launch from Western Europe (the others are usually from Kourou Spaceport, French Guiana).
As Il Messaggero points out, "thanks to Virgin Orbit, it is Great Britain that has broken the record that could have seen Italy in the race as well, which will now have to accelerate in order not to miss another record already scheduled for the very long track in Grottaglie (Taranto): become home to the first non-US tourist spaceport, preceded only by those in New Mexico by Virgin Galactic and in Texas by Blue Origin".
With regard to the project for the first national spaceport at the Taranto-Grottaglie airport, just last month the tender for the construction of the logistics platform was awarded to the temporary design group made up of ADR Ingegneria Spa, Proger Spa, Rina Consulting Spa and Architect Camerana and integrated technique dedicated to the development of the New Space Economy.
The step comes almost five years since July 2018, when in Bari, Sitael and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) signed two agreements and a declaration of intent with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic to transfer suborbital flights to the Grottaglie spaceport. The first trials on Italian suborbital flights are scheduled for 2023. But London arrived earlier.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-la-missione-di-virgin-orbit-accende-i-riflettori-sul-risiko-dei-lanciatori-europei/ on Tue, 10 Jan 2023 04:26:15 +0000.