Tim Furniss/LONDON
A former Minuteman II missile refurbished by Orbital Sciences (OSC) will be launched from California Spaceport at Vandenberg AFB in late 1999, carrying an experimental satellite. The Joint Air Force/Weber Satellite (Jawsat), developed by students from the US Air Force Academy and Utah's State University.
California Spaceport is being built under a business partnership between ITT and California Commercial Spaceport and is being provided with funding from the state government. The Minuteman launch originally was to have taken place from a commercial spaceport to be created on Kodiak Island in Alaska, but the venture collapsed.
The Californian enterprise is similar to the Spaceport Florida Authority. This operates from Pad 40 at the US Air Force's Cape Canaveral site in Florida, where other redundant pads are planned to be converted. California Spaceport won a contract from the USAF to provide the payload processing and launch pad for the refurbished Minuteman, which is now called the Minotaur.
OSC won the contract from the Air Force in September 1997 to build a new family of Orbital/Suborbital Programme small launchers based on refurbished first stages from redundant Minuteman II missiles. Some boosters will be equipped with Minuteman upper stages and elements of OSC's existing Pegasus and Taurus boosters, as well as a hybrid liquid bi-propellant upper stage. The launcher will use guidance systems and payload fairings from the Pegasus.
The Minuteman derivative will be able to lift up to about 400kg into low polar earth orbit (LEO). If commercialised, the Minotaur's LEO capability could complement OSC's Pegasus and Taurus boosters, which have an equivalent payload range of 540kg to 1,350kg.
At the moment the US Government forbids the use of converted military missiles for commercial launches, but it seems to have overlooked a similar restriction agreed with Russia, which is commercialising several converted missiles. OSC, therefore, believes the US policy is difficult to justify.
The company may fly up to 24 Minuteman orbital-suborbital launches to 2004 for the USAF, with an annual launch rate of six a year. The OSC contract has a potential value of $206 million for the 24 launches. Up to 11 of the boosters are due to launch satellites and three will fly missions demonstrating new hybrid upper stage technology. These are part of the NASA Bantam rocket technology programme aimed at developing a low-cost small launcher.
The Minuteman-based booster is being developed at OSC's Chandler, Arizona, plant formerly owned by Space Data, which built sounding rockets and the re-entry system for the Minuteman 1 missile.
The USAF has so far only committed funds to the first launch, that of the Jawsat. This has been developed by Weber State University's Center for Aerospace Technology (CAST) in Utah and will operate for about five years, returning data on the effect of the atmosphere and global warming on global positioning system signals.
CAST also built the Nusat craft which was deployed from the Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1985 and which conducted radar experiments for the Federal Aviation Administration. In 1990, another satellite, the Webersat, was launched piggyback on an Ariane 4.
Six other small satellites have been fabricated by CAST, which also helped with design. These include Amsat amateur radio satellites, the largest of which, Amsat Phase 3D, will be launched on an Ariane 5 next year.
NEW JOBS FOR OLD
A former Minuteman II missile refurbished by Orbital Sciences (OSC) will be launched from California Spaceport at Vandenberg AFB in late 1999, carrying an experimental satellite. The Joint Air Force/Weber Satellite (Jawsat), developed by students from the US Air Force Academy and Utah's State University.
California Spaceport is being built under a business partnership between ITT and California Commercial Spaceport and is being provided with funding from the state government. The Minuteman launch originally was to have taken place from a commercial spaceport to be created on Kodiak Island in Alaska, but the venture collapsed.
The Californian enterprise is similar to the Spaceport Florida Authority. This operates from Pad 40 at the US Air Force's Cape Canaveral site in Florida, where other redundant pads are planned to be converted. California Spaceport won a contract from the USAF to provide the payload processing and launch pad for the refurbished Minuteman, which is now called the Minotaur.
OSC won the contract from the Air Force in September 1997 to build a new family of Orbital/Suborbital Programme small launchers based on refurbished first stages from redundant Minuteman II missiles. Some boosters will be equipped with Minuteman upper stages and elements of OSC's existing Pegasus and Taurus boosters, as well as a hybrid liquid bi-propellant upper stage. The launcher will use guidance systems and payload fairings from the Pegasus.
The Minuteman derivative will be able to lift up to about 400kg into low polar earth orbit (LEO). If commercialised, the Minotaur's LEO capability could complement OSC's Pegasus and Taurus boosters, which have an equivalent payload range of 540kg to 1,350kg.
At the moment the US Government forbids the use of converted military missiles for commercial launches, but it seems to have overlooked a similar restriction agreed with Russia, which is commercialising several converted missiles. OSC, therefore, believes the US policy is difficult to justify.
The company may fly up to 24 Minuteman orbital-suborbital launches to 2004 for the USAF, with an annual launch rate of six a year. The OSC contract has a potential value of $206 million for the 24 launches. Up to 11 of the boosters are due to launch satellites and three will fly missions demonstrating new hybrid upper stage technology. These are part of the NASA Bantam rocket technology programme aimed at developing a low-cost small launcher.
The Minuteman-based booster is being developed at OSC's Chandler, Arizona, plant formerly owned by Space Data, which built sounding rockets and the re-entry system for the Minuteman 1 missile.
The USAF has so far only committed funds to the first launch, that of the Jawsat. This has been developed by Weber State University's Center for Aerospace Technology (CAST) in Utah and will operate for about five years, returning data on the effect of the atmosphere and global warming on global positioning system signals.
CAST also built the Nusat craft which was deployed from the Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1985 and which conducted radar experiments for the Federal Aviation Administration. In 1990, another satellite, the Webersat, was launched piggyback on an Ariane 4.
Six other small satellites have been fabricated by CAST, which also helped with design. These include Amsat amateur radio satellites, the largest of which, Amsat Phase 3D, will be launched on an Ariane 5 next year.
Source: Flight International
