Guy Norris/LOS ANGELES
McDONNELL Douglas (MDC) is to develop the Delta 3 launcher in a bid to break into the market to launch large communications satellites. The decision comes on the back of a Hughes Space and Communications launch contract, potentially worth $1.5 billion.
The contract with Hughes covers ten firm launches, plus options for additional flights through to 2005. The first Delta 3 will be flown in 1998.
The new launcher, which will carry 3,810kg into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), will be in direct competition with the Lockheed Martin Atlas 2AS, with virtually the same payload capability, as MDC makes its bid to compete in the commercial-launcher market for large communications-satellites.
The launcher differs from the 1,820kg-to-GTO-class Delta 2/7925t, with a new first-stage engine, a high-energy cryogenic upper stage and a larger payload fairing, to accommodate bigger satellites, such as the Hughes HS-601.
MDC has flown the Delta 2 on 24 successful missions, with a 100% success rate, since the first flight in 1990, plus 17 by the Interim Delta 2 between 1988-92. The company has an order book for 44 launches, but only three are for launches to GTO.
The Delta 3 development is the first for which private investment, and not government funding, has been used to develop an up rated launcher for the large-satellite market. The new booster will be designed and developed at MDC's Huntington Beach factory, in California, and assembled at its plant in Pueblo, Colorado.
The MDC-Hughes link is a strategic move to ease pressure on launch prices, which have risen to $70 million a satellite, on some boosters. It also continues a relationship in which Delta models have been used to launch 41 Hughes satellites since 1963.
Source: Flight International
