Forecasts for 2001 - Space

New launchers and the ISS will boost the sector's spirits

Tim Furniss/SPACEFLIGHT CORRESPONDENT Graham Warwick/AMERICAS EDITOR

Against a background of the continuing on-orbit assembly of the International Space Station (ISS), 2001 will see the start of a new campaign to explore Mars and the introduction of at least five launch vehicles.

For NASA, 2000 ended on a high note, with the successful erection of the ISS's Lockheed Martin-built solar arrays on perhaps the trickiest assembly mission so far. Seven of the nine Space Shuttle missions scheduled for 2001 are for continued assembly of the ISS. These will include delivery of the US laboratory module Destiny and the Canadian robotic manipulator system.

The first three-man expedition crew, on board the ISS since October, will return to Earth in March and at least two more crews will be launched to the Space Station during the year. As NASA and its international partners establish a permanent presence in space, they will also ramp up efforts to attract commercial uses for their portions of the ISS.

Nine Shuttle flights, including one to service the Hubble Space Telescope and a science mission, is an ambitious goal for NASA. Given 2000's record of delays, seven flights would seem a more realistic goal, but would involve slowing the ISS assembly sequence.

The coming year will see a flurry of activity in the launch services market, with a number of new or improved vehicles coming on line. Perhaps the most significant of these is Boeing's Delta IV Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), which is scheduled for a maiden flight in late 2001. The two launcher families being developed under the US Air Force-supported EELV programme - the other is Lockheed Martin's Atlas V, scheduled for a first launch in 2002 - will provide the main US competition in the commercial launch services market in the years to come.

Other significant events planned for this year include the long-delayed first flight of India's indigenously developed Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), now scheduled for February. With a 2.5t payload to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), the GSLV is booked to fly two Indian Insats and the first Metsat this year. Japan, meanwhile, hopes to fly its improved H-2A expendable launch vehicle for the first time in July. Designed to carry 4-7t GTO payloads, the H-2A is intended to be more competitive on the international market than the cancelled H-2.

The major theme of this year for commercial launch providers is likely to be increasing the payload capability of their vehicles to keep pace with the growing size of geosynchronous-orbit (GEO) communications satellites. Arianespace currently holds the high ground, its Ariane 5 having lifted a record 6.3t payload to GTO in November. But other launch providers are snapping at the European company's heels.

Russia plans to launch the first uprated Proton/Breeze M early in the new year. This vehicle can place payloads up to 5.5t in GTO, and will be the largest booster marketed by International Launch Services (ILS) until the5-8t Atlas V family enters service. Meanwhile, the 4.5t-payload Atlas IIIB, an uprated version of ILS's current Russian-engined Atlas IIIA, will make its maiden flight this year.

Pressure will come on Arianespace when Boeing launches its first Delta IV late this year. The initial "Medium +" vehicle has a GTO payload exceeding 5.8t, but within two years the Delta IV family will include a "Heavy" vehicle capable of lifting more than 13t to GTO. Europe's response is a programme to enhance the Ariane 5's performance, beginning with an improved upper stage which is scheduled to enter service late this year and which will boost GTO payload to as much as 8t.

Behind the push for higher payloads is the increasing size of GEO satellites. The current record was set in October, when Boeing-led Sea Launch placed the United Arab Emirates' Thuraya mobile communications satellite into GTO. Built by Hughes (now Boeing), the 5.1t Thuraya is the heaviest commercial spacecraft launched to date - but there are bigger birds waiting in the wings: Alcatel's 6t Spacebus 4000 and the 7.5t Space Systems/Loral 20:20.

Driving the demand for bigger satellites is the move into broadband communications payloads to serve the rapidly growing Internet market. Intelsat, to be privatised this year, plans to place a contract for a $1.5 billion next-generation broadband satellite system by mid-2001. Such orders are in the pipeline from other major satellite operators.

Despite the internet explosion, overall sales of GEO satellites are expected to remain flat for the next few years. The low earth orbit (LEO) market, meanwhile, is unlikely to recover from Iridium's bankruptcy for some time. Iridium will return to full operation this year, under its new owners, but the market malaise lingers on and a question mark still hangs over the financial viability of GlobalStar.

A knock-on effect of Iridium's financial collapse in 1999 is that the maiden flights of privately developed low-cost launch vehicles that had been planned for this year will no longer take place. Beal Aerospace ceased operations last year and Kistler Aerospace has yet to raise the funds to complete its K-1 booster. This leaves the field clear for the established players.

Arianespace and ILS each expect to launch about one commercial payload a month in 2001. Boeing's Delta II, meanwhile, will be kept busy flying spacecraft for the US Government, including the "commercial" launch of an experimental lightweight GEO satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. Delta IIs will launch several USAir Force global positioning system satellites plus a number of payloads for NASA - including the 2001 Mars Odyssey.

Named for science fiction author Arthur C Clarke, co-creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mars Odyssey will be launched in April to begin a long-term exploration programme. The spacecraft will join the successful Mars Global Surveyor in orbit around the 'red planet' in October and study potential landing sites for future robotic missions scheduled to start in 2003. After the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999, NASA needs a success if its programme is to continue.

Source: Flight International