NASA Selects ULA For 3 Launches; SpaceX for 1
NASA Selects Launch Services Contract for Three Missions
“NASA has selected United Launch Services LLC of Englewood, Colo., to launch the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) and Joint Polar Satellite System-1 (JPSS-1) spacecraft. The spacecraft will launch in October 2014, July 2014 and November 2016, respectively, aboard Delta II rockets from Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.”
NASA Selects Launch Services Contract for Jason-3 Mission
“NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., to launch the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Jason-3 spacecraft in December 2014 aboard a Falcon 9 v1.0 rocket from Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.”
Good to see OCO #2 finally get a ride.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
TEA Party in Space
“Good to see OCO #2 finally get a ride”
And thankfully NOT another Orbital vehicle…
Are all four LEO satellites? And why is it a Falcon 1.0? Won’t SpaceX be out of 1.0 rockets by the end of next year, before the 2014 timeframe of this contract?
So we got one Falcon 1.0, capable of 10MT LEO for $82 million including processing. We have three Delta II’s, capable of up to 6MT LEO, for $137 million each, including processing.Is that it? Is there more to it that I’m missing? I guess we should just be glad that SpaceX has finally gotten one of these science satellites at all at this point.
MM42:
Since all four launches are from the west coast, it’s a good bet that they will all be put into polar orbit.
The Falcon 9 can haul twice the payload as the most powerful variant of the Delta II. Could Spacex sell the extra margin for secondary payloads? Charge the customer $82 million and still make over a hundred million on the launch?
Still, twice the payload for half the price reduces launch costs to a quarter of the ‘going rate’.
Hopefully Spacex will have launched a Falcon with fairing before this launch. I haven’t heard much lately but the plans were for an ultra-light, four section composite fairing design. They would use four sections so that they could be transported by truck to the launch site. I’m not sure how many sections, 2 or 4, would actually separate during launch.
tinker
Here’s a question for those with more knowledge of launch vehicles than I.
Are these launch vehicles all roughly comparable? If so, how can spending $166 million more than SpaceX would charge be justified? Can SpaceX not get the vehicles ready in time?
It’s about the proven reliability of the Delta II vs the Falcon 9. If you can afford a rocket with more flight history, you buy it to reduce the some of the program risks (of failure). The JASON-3 project (a European spacecraft) does not have enough money to afford a Delta II, so they bought the cheaper Falcon 9. Hopefully, they will both work perfectly and everyone will be happy.
They aren’t comparable. Given the string of recent launch failures that lead to this contract, it seems pretty likely that NASA was willing to pay a premium for proven reliability. Delta II has a record that can’t be touched – only the Saturn and EELV families have a higher success ratio, but total successful Delta II launches outnumber both of those put together. Falcon 9 just doesn’t have enough launches yet to build a comparable level of confidence and the Falcon 1 record is pretty spotty.
SpaceX are not the only game in town and it’s ok if they don’t win every single contract in sight. Considering the value of the missions that were lost in recent launch failures, it would be understandable for NASA to pay a premium on launch costs for a proven reliability record for the replacement missions.
Spacex doesn’t have the flight history to justify more.
Todd/majormajor, at this point, I’m guessing the price delta (and commensurate technical tradeoff) that we are seeing is in the fairing. It’s easy to forget that F9 has yet to fly with one. And my guess is NASA SMD and LSP are particularly sensitive to fairing development. The OCO and GLORY PIs can attest to the $1B at the bottom of the South Pacific for that proposition. Now of course Taurus XL does not equal F9 but you can understand their trepidation with an unproven sep system.
Even if it’s 3-1, the importance of SMD placing one of their high value observatories (even if it is on behalf of NOAA) on F9 cannot be overstated. COTS/CRS payloads are one thing; Jason-3 is quite another. This is a huge feather in Elon’s cap and hopefully a sign of things to come.
BTW, has OSC announced what went wrong with those launches?
Well, fairing separation problem. They thought they fixed it after the first failure but something happened again. Here is the story with some details after the Glory failure – http://spaceflightnow.com/t…
Maybe they didn’t address the real issue that caused the failure or it was something new after all the changes.
The big news here, of course, is that this means that Delta II is back from the dead.
ASFalcon13,
Do you know this for fact? Or are they just using up the last few Delta II’s on this contact? I love the Delta II and would be happy if it went back into production, but I thought it was game over, even the facilities are being replaced.
Steve
No, you’re right, these would be using remaining stock, if I understand correctly. That being said, it still means that NPP wasn’t the last DII launch after all.
Yes it is remaining stock items.
Last Delta Launches (Kelper & NPP) the launch provider rep. told me that they had enough spare parts for 3-4 more launches but they were not making any NEW hardware.
Turns out the Delta II is not getting more expensive because of the prime contractor, but the subcontractors keep jacking up the price of all the components.
I am guessing that the big ticket items (and partially tailorer to each mission) still remains to be manufactured (fairing and upper stage configuration).
Thanks Stuart.
I foolishly let myself hope for a second or two, but you confirm what was reported months ago. Too bad. They get an LV that’s damn near perfect for today’s technology and market, so they can it; while elsewhere other people are building outdated, totally inappropriate LVs just because they can. Ain’t progress grand?
Steve
It also means OCO will make it to orbit this time.