United States Department of Transportation
i
U.S. & international small launch vehicles : Quarterly Launch Report : special report
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1998-01-01
[PDF-106.64 KB]
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Abstract:Since the 1980s, there have been expectations that a substantial commercial market for launch services using small launch vehicles would
develop. In fact, commercial launches of small launch vehicles have, in theory, been available since the mid-1980s. However, the first
commercial launch of a small vehicle did not occur until 1993. Since then, the market has been small, about one or two commercial launches annually, and until recently, only U.S. firms have served the market (the first non-U.S. commercial launch of a small vehicle occurred in December 1997). There are now revitalized expectations that the
market will become much larger in the next few years. These expectations are driven by the emergence of new commercial applications for small satellites in low Earth orbit ? ideal payloads
for small vehicles ? and are fueling the development of new commercial vehicles by launch service providers around the world. Constellations of small, commercial satellites will be used in low Earth orbit (LEO) to provide global wireless data and telephone services as well as international data networks; these constellations are sometimes called ?big LEO? systems and use dozens and sometimes hundreds of satellites. The first of these systems to be deployed is the mobile satellite communication system Iridium, owned by Motorola and its
international partners.
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