The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensed six commercial launches in 2001. This total represents three orbital launches from U.S. ranges for commercial and government customers, two orbital launches by the multinational Sea Launch Company and one suborbital launch from Australia. Overall, 16 commercial orbital launches occurred worldwide in 2001. This number is significantly less than in prior years (35 in 2000 and 39 in 1999). Arianespace captured half of the world market during 2001, the U.S. and Russia each had 19 percent, and the Sea Launch Company had 12 percent. The number of FAAlicensed launches has declined since 1997-1999 when several mobile communications services satellites were orbited. In 2000, there were 10 FAA-licensed launches. Of the five FAA-licensed launches in 2001, three were on U.S. built vehicles: a Delta 2, Atlas 2AS and a Taurus. The Boeing Delta 2 (7320) carried DigitalGlobes QuickBird commercial remote sensing satellite, which now occupies the orbit once reserved for QuickBird 1, lost during a Russian launch failure in 2000. Lockheed Martin Corporations International Launch Services (ILS) successfully flew the Atlas 2AS, this time carrying aloft ICO F-1, a commercial medium Earth orbit (MEO) communications satellite operated by ICO Global Communications. A Taurus launch vehicle was selected to deploy OrbView 4, developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC), NASAs QuikTOMS, and Celestis 4. Unfortunately, the launch vehicle experienced a first stage anomaly and the satellites failed to reach orbit. Sea Launch launched XM Rock and XM Roll for U.S.-based XM Satellite Radio, Inc., on March 18 and May 8, respectively. XM Satellite Radio provides over 100 digital radio stations for subscribers across the United States. In addition to the orbital launches, the FAA issued one suborbital license in 2001 for the HyShot suborbital hypersonic test launch from the Woomera Protected Area, Australia. The launch was licensed because U.S.-based Astrotech Space Operations provided the Terrier-Orion sounding rocket for the HyShot flight test through a Memorandum of Agreement with the University of Queensland. The Commercial Space Transportation: 2001 Year in Review summarizes U.S. and international orbital launch activities for calendar year 2001 and provides a historical look at the past five years of commercial launch activities.


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    Titel :

    Commercial Space Transportation: 2001 Year in Review


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2002


    Format / Umfang :

    16 pages


    Medientyp :

    Report


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch