The Ariane 5 mission with a “mirror” pair of relay satellites for Japan and Vietnam has been given the go-ahead for liftoff on May 15 from the Spaceport in French Guiana.

Approval for this flight was issued following today’s launch readiness review, which is held prior to every Ariane mission – confirming the “green” status of the Ariane 5 vehicle, its JCSAT-13 and VINASAT-2 satellites, the Spaceport’s infrastructure and the network of downrange tracking stations.

Both passengers on the Ariane 5 were built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems based on the company’s A2100 platform design – providing an unusual combination of similar satellites from a single manufacturer. 

In addition, these are the 100th and 101st commercial geostationary communications satellites from Lockheed Martin since the company’s first such spacecraft was orbited in December 1975.  To date, 41 Lockheed Martin payloads have been entrusted to Arianespace for its launch services.

Weighing approximately 4,530 kg. at launch, JCSAT-13 will be positioned in geostationary orbit at 124 degrees East, with a design life exceeding 15 years for the Japanese operator SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. It is fitted with 44 Ku-band transponders and will provide direct TV broadcast links to all of Japan as a replacement satellite for JCSAT-4A, and also will meet satellite relay coverage demands in Southeast Asia.

VINASAT-2 has an estimated liftoff mass of 2,970 kg., and is fitted with 24 Ku-band transponders to provide radio, television and telephone links for all of Vietnam from its orbit of 131.8 degrees East.  As with its JCSAT-13 “sister” payload on the upcoming Ariane 5 flight, VINASAT-2’s design life exceeds 15 years.   This will be the second satellite launched by Ariane 5 for use by the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, following VINASAT-1 in April 2008.

 

• See the Arianespace launch kit for further details.

LOS ANGELES and ARLINGTON, Va., -- ATK (NYSE: ATK) announced today it has developed Liberty into a complete commercial crew transportation system, including the spacecraft, abort system, launch vehicle, and ground and mission operations, designed from inception to meet NASA's human-rating requirements with a potential for the first test flight in 2014 and Liberty crewed flight in 2015.

The company also announced Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) will provide support to the ATK and Astrium Liberty team as a major subcontractor on the project.

"Our goal in providing Liberty is to build the safest and most robust system that provides the shortest time to operation using tested and proven human-rated components," said Kent Rominger, vice president and program manager for Liberty. "Liberty will give the U.S. a new launch capability with a robust business case and a schedule that we expect will have us flying crews in just three years, ending our dependence on Russia."

"Liberty will enable a successful commercial space program and result in a globally competitive capability that America doesn't have today," said Rominger. "This program is changing the way we do business and can also result in a positive change to government programs."

Liberty's test flights are expected to begin in 2014, with a crewed mission anticipated in late 2015. The current schedule will support crewed missions for NASA and other potential customers by 2016, with a price-per-seat that is projected to be lower than the cost on the Russian Soyuz rocket.

Liberty's approach is to bring together flight-proven elements designed from inception to meet NASA's human-rating requirement, reducing development time and costs, and providing known, reliable and safe systems. The simple configuration of a solid first stage and liquid second stage lowers the likelihood of failure and enables a flight path with total abort coverage, maximizing survival for the crew in the unlikely event of an anomaly requiring an abort. In addition, the Liberty spacecraft leverages design work performed at NASA Langley Research Center on the composite crew module and launch abort system, for which ATK was a contractor.

"Because Liberty provides a safe and reliable vehicle for the crew, as well as a sustainable business for years to come, it can be a successful commercial business," said Rominger. "Liberty's business case benefits from mature, flight-proven elements that dramatically lower our up-front development costs."

Liberty has a robust and sustainable business case that will create and sustain thousands of jobs across the United States including Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Its low remaining development cost accelerates the time to market, filling NASA's requirements, and provides a quicker return on investment to outside entities. Liberty's performance of 44,500 pounds to low-earth orbit enables the system to launch both crew and cargo and also serve non-crewed markets including ISS cargo up and down mass, commercial space station servicing, U.S. government satellite launch, and future endeavors.

"We believe that no other offering can match Liberty's safety, spacious spacecraft, customer service and performance," said Rominger. "These traits enable the Liberty business to provide the best commercial space flight experience."

The Liberty spacecraft includes a composite crew module, which ATK built at its Iuka, Miss., facility as part of a NASA risk-reduction program at Langley between 2007 and 2010. As prime contractor, ATK is responsible for the composite crew module, Max Launch Abort System (MLAS), first stage, system integration and ground and mission operations, while Astrium provides the second stage powered by the Vulcain 2 engine and Lockheed Martin provides subsystems and other support.

"Astrium is proud to be part of the ATK Liberty team and to provide our proven second stage, which is powered by the Vulcain 2 engine, as an integral part of this exciting next-generation launch system," said John Schumacher, CEO of Astrium in North America, an EADS North America company. "Initially, we will ship the second stage to the Kennedy Space Center where it will be integrated by the skilled workforce there. However, once Liberty's business base is established in the U.S. market, we envisage Liberty upper stage manufacturing in the United States."

Lockheed Martin is providing crew interface systems design, subsystem selection, assembly, integration and mission operations support for the Liberty spacecraft. These subsystems could include avionics, guidance navigation and control, propulsion systems, environmental control system, docking system and other components.

"Combining Lockheed Martin's and ATK's decades of human spaceflight experience to create the Liberty space vehicle will help ensure America's crew access to the International Space Station – sooner rather than later," said Scott Norris, Lockheed Martin Lead, Liberty Program. "We look forward to our role supporting Liberty as it delivers on a highly-effective cost solution for NASA crew and for commercial missions."

The program has optimized and streamlined development, fabrication and mission operations while ensuring the utmost safety to support a commercial marketplace. Liberty also builds upon processes from existing ATK, Astrium and Lockheed Martin commercial programs. ATK's commercial programs include solid rocket motors for various launch vehicles, system integration and composite technology (for crew module, Delta IV, Atlas V and A350 Airbus composite structures) and other commercial products. Astrium builds the Ariane 5, which launches the majority of the world's commercial satellites and is afforded the lowest insurance rates based on its successful track record. Lockheed Martin commercial programs include satellites, the Atlas V and Athena launch vehicles.

"The team's combined best practices enable Liberty to offer affordable access to space, both to serve existing market needs and, critically, to spur the development of new markets that depend on affordable, safe access to space," said Rominger.

Liberty has been developed under a CCDEV-2 unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with the NASA Commercial program office at the Kennedy Space Center.  All development to date has been performed on internal funding from ATK and Astrium. Under this SAA, the team has successfully completed four milestones. The next major milestone is a structural test of the second stage tank, to be conducted at Astrium in June.

"Working with the NASA team under the SAA has provided significant benefit to the development of the Liberty crew transportation system," said Rominger.

The Liberty team will be working with NASA centers to further leverage lessons learned, engineering expertise test, launch facilities and mission operations, including Kennedy, Johnson, Marshall, Langley, Glenn, Ames and Stennis. 

Additional subcontractors for Liberty include Safran/Snecma, which provides the Vulcain 2 engine; Safran/Labinal out of Salisbury, Md., which provides second stage wiring; L-3 Communications Cincinnati Electronics (L3-CE), which provides first stage, abort and telemetry system avionics, as well as second stage telemetry and abort system integration prior to launch at KSC; and Moog Inc. (NYSE: MOG.A and MOG.B), which provides thrust vector control and propulsion control.

The Liberty launch system uses components from both the US Space Shuttle program and ESA's Ariane V. Photo Credit: ATK

ATK is an aerospace, defense, and commercial products company with operations in 22 states, Puerto Rico, and internationally. News and information can be found on the Internet at www.atk.com.

Certain information discussed in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  Although ATK believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved.  Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Among those factors are: the challenges of developing new launch vehicles; changes in governmental spending, budgetary policies and product sourcing strategies; the company's competitive environment; the terms and timing of awards and contracts; and economic conditions.  ATK undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For further information on factors that could impact ATK, and statements contained herein, please refer to ATK's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., (May 4, 2012) – A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the Advanced Extremely High Frequency-2 (AEHF-2) satellite for the United States Air Force lifted off from Space Launch Complex-41 here at 2:42 p.m. EDT today. This was ULA’s 4th launch of an aggressive 11 mission schedule for the year and marks the 30th Atlas V mission and the 60th launch for ULA.

"ULA is proud to serve alongside our mission partners and privileged that the Air Force entrusts the ULA team to deliver critical national security capability to orbit for our soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines around the world,” said Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president, Mission Operations. “Through our focus on attaining Perfect Product Delivery, ULA remains dedicated to providing reliable, cost-effective launch services while continuing our unwavering commitment to 100 percent mission success. Today’s successful launch was the 60th since ULA was formed just over five years ago and we congratulate the AEHF team on this important step toward delivering these critical protected communications capabilities.”

This mission was launched aboard an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) 531 configuration vehicle, which includes a 5-meter diameter RUAG Space payload fairing along with three Aerojet solid rocket motors attached to the Atlas booster. The Atlas booster for this mission was powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine and the Centaur upper stage was powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RL10A engine.

The AEHF constellation is a joint-service satellite communications system that will provide survivable, global, secure, protected and jam-resistant communications for high-priority military ground, sea and air assets.

Developed by the United States Air Force to provide assured access to space for Department of Defense and other government payloads, the EELV Program supports the full range of government mission requirements, while delivering on schedule and providing significant cost savings over the heritage launch systems.

ULA's 60th launch carrying the USAF AEHF-2 spacecraft. Photo Credit: ULA

ULA's next launch is the Atlas V NROL-38 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office scheduled June 18 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

ULA program management, engineering, test, and mission support functions are headquartered in Denver, Colo. Manufacturing, assembly and integration operations are located at Decatur, Ala., and Harlingen, Texas. Launch operations are located at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., and Vandenberg AFB, Calif.

Hawthorne, CA – On Monday, April 30, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will conduct a static fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine powerful Merlin engines in preparation for the company’s upcoming launch.

The test is targeted for 3:00 PM ET/ 12:00 PM PT.

The 9 engine test will take place at the company’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as part of a full launch dress rehearsal leading up to the second Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) launch. During the rehearsal, SpaceX engineers will run through all countdown processes as though it were launch day. The exercise will end with all nine engines firing at full power for two seconds.

After the test, SpaceX will conduct a thorough review of all data as engineers make final preparations for the upcoming launch, currently targeted for May 7. SpaceX plans to launch its Dragon spacecraft into low-Earth orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket. During the mission, Dragon’s sensors and flight systems will be subject to a series of tests to determine if the vehicle is ready to berth with the space station. If NASA decides Dragon is ready, the vehicle will attach to the station and astronauts will open Dragon’s hatch and unload the cargo onboard.

This will be the first attempt by a commercial company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, a feat previously performed by only a few governments. Success is not guaranteed. If any aspect of the mission is not successful, SpaceX will learn from the experience and try again. It is also the second demonstration flight under NASA’s program to develop commercial supply services to the International Space Station.

The first SpaceX COTS flight, in December 2010, made SpaceX the first commercial company in history to send a spacecraft to orbit and return it safely to Earth. Once SpaceX demonstrates the ability to carry cargo to the space station, it will begin to fulfill its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for NASA for at least 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the space station. The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft were designed to one day carry astronauts; both the COTS and CRS missions will yield valuable flight experience toward this goal.

Falcon 9 COTS -2 (Dragon) on the launch pad Photo Credit: Spacex

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER: The upcoming launch of a SpaceX spacecraft and rocket on a demonstration flight to the International Space Station is expected to cross a key milestone on the path to operational, commercial missions.

"It's almost like the lead-up to Apollo, in my mind," said Mike Horkachuck, NASA's project executive for SpaceX. "You had Mercury then you had Gemini and eventually you had Apollo. This would be similar in the sense that, we're not going to the moon or anything as spectacular as that, but we are in the beginnings of commercializing space. This may be the Mercury equivalent to eventually flying crew and then eventually leading to, in the long run, passenger travel in space."

California-based Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, is preparing to launch an ambitious mission to dock its Dragon spacecraft to the space station and return it to Earth. The spacecraft will not have a crew, but will carry about 1,200 pounds of cargo that the astronauts and cosmonauts living on the station will be able to use. The capsule will go into space atop a Falcon 9 rocket also built by SpaceX.

Because the mission is a test flight, the cargo is not material deemed critical to the crew, Horkachuck said. Launch is targeted for April 30 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, within sight of the launch pads the space shuttles used to carry the station's components into orbit. There also are several tests and reviews coming up later this month similar to those performed ahead of space shuttle missions.

If this mission is successful, the Dragon is expected to become operational and launch regular supply runs to the station. Unlike any other cargo carrier, the Dragon can bring things back to Earth, too, a boon for scientists whose research is taking place on the orbiting laboratory.

SpaceX already has two successful Falcon 9 launches to its credit, along with a history making demonstration of the Dragon capsule that in December 2010, became the first privately built and operated spacecraft to be launched to and recovered from Earth orbit.

"I think the (first demonstration) mission was more of a question mark in my mind," Horkachuck said, "because no capsule that these guys had built before had gone into space, done the basic maneuvering to show you have attitude control as well as re-entering, so knowing the vehicle came through re-entry relatively unscathed and all the parachute systems worked perfectly, that was a real big deal."

Because of that mission's achievements, NASA and SpaceX agreed to combine the planned second and third demonstration flights into one. Assuming the Dragon spacecraft passes about a few days' worth of equipment checks and demonstration in orbit, it will be allowed to approach the station close enough for astronauts to grab the Dragon with the station's large robotic arm. The arm will berth the capsule to the station and astronauts will unload the spacecraft and put about 1,400 pounds of material inside the Dragon for return to Earth.

The mission is expected to last about 21 days, Horkachuck said.

For Horkachuck, work for this mission began more than five years ago, when SpaceX and NASA signed a Space Act Agreement to work together to demonstrate they could carry cargo to the space station on a private rocket and spacecraft. NASA is sharing the cost for the demonstration missions under the COTS program, short for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services.

"It's been a very good experience," Horkachuck said. "The Space Act Agreement lets us interact with the contractor in a much more cooperative way than the typical government contract does. We can suggest how we've done it in the past and maybe they'll use that, or they'll come up with a slightly altered version to work through a challenge."

Getting the rocket, spacecraft and overall mission together has been a learning experience for both SpaceX and NASA, Horkachuck said. For instance, SpaceX learned how much more work is involved in flying to a space station with a crew on board, compared with launching a spacecraft and recovering it after a few orbits.

"Every big project is going to have various technical challenges," Horkachuck said. "One of the refreshing things has been, once you convince SpaceX they need to make a change and it's the right thing to do from a technical perspective, they just go off and do it. There's not a lot of wrangling."

The partnership has shown NASA a blueprint for handling future missions, too.

"If you've got a good relationship with the partner, it's an outstanding way of doing business," Horkachuck said.

All that said, rocketry and spaceflight remain tricky businesses that are unforgiving of even slight oversights.

"The history of all rocket launches is that you can have a successful mission and then some tiny little thing can come bite you on the next mission," Horkachuck said. "There's so many little things that can go wrong, you have to always be diligent about every little thing."

The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are at Cape Canaveral undergoing final preparations ahead of the launch. For Horkachuck, the three weeks in orbit will be filled with the tension familiar to anyone involved with a spaceflight, he said.

"Once Dragon gets into orbit and is operating, there's certainly going to be a big cheer," he said. "But I think most of the big events and dynamic events in this spaceflight really culminate when you finally have splashdown. Throughout the mission, there will be moments of panic followed by long periods of calm.

Dragon on the pad. Photo Credit: NASA