Abstract
The market for small satellites is expected to increase substantially in the coming years, but there is little capacity to launch them affordably. No operational dedicated launcher for small satellites exists today. Small satellites, launched as secondary payloads, are entirely dependent on the constraints set by the primary payload, such as launch date and target orbit. Launch costs of less than €50,000 per kg of payload are required in order to directly compete with piggy-back ride shares. With a dedicated launcher a higher cost per kg can be accepted for payloads which need to be delivered timely and accurately to a desired orbit.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
van Kleef, A.J.P. et al. (2018). Innovative Small Launcher. In: Hatton, S. (eds) Proceedings of the 13th Reinventing Space Conference. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32817-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32817-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-32816-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-32817-1
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)