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ORLANDO – In the face of increasing competition from start-ups entering the field, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems is seeking to reduce the costs of its existing Pegasus and Minotaur rockets.
Speaking at a panel discussion at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space Forum on September 19, a company executive said that work was underway to reduce the costs of his vehicles.
"One of the costs I have is to streamline our operations in small spaces and dramatically reduce the costs of our products on the market for DOD, NASA and commercial customers," said Phil Joyce, vice President of Small Spaces Launch Programs at Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, the former ATK Orbital.
The company has focused on the reliability of its launchers, he said, including with Pegasus, whose launch was canceled more than 20 years ago. "Over the years, our designs and concepts and architecture have evolved with a focus on reliability," he said. "This reliability is not always cheap. In some cases, it takes a lot of work and we opted for extreme reliability on our products. "
However, the high costs associated with the 2014 Pegasus – NASA contract for the launch of the ICON spacecraft on a Pegasus were $ 56.3 million, including payload processing and other services. a renewed interest for small species. Pegasus has been launched only four times in the last ten years. All for NASA, with the upcoming launch of ICON, has recently been postponed until October 26th.
Joyce said the company remains committed to Pegasus and ways to reduce costs. The company has developed a maintenance and upgrade plan to continue operating its L-1011 aircraft, one of the last remaining in service, for the next 10 years. Joyce noted that the aircraft livery had already been updated to replace the Orbital ATK logo with Northrop Grumman logo.
For Pegasus himself, Joyce said the company has been working in recent years to reduce vehicle costs by 20 to 30 percent. One approach to this has been to develop a comprehensive set of avionics in its launcher and missile defense programs.
"We have developed what we call a common space launch architecture, which is a common set of avionics products that we share between different platforms," Joyce said. "What this will enable us to do is to create larger quantities and, more importantly, to integrate larger quantities to reduce our labor costs and reduce our equipment costs."
These lower start-up costs, he said, are aimed at making Pegasus more attractive to customers beyond NASA. "We look forward to continuing the Pegasus product line and, by reducing our costs on Pegasus, to make it more accessible to a broader customer base," he said.
Northrop is also working to reduce the cost of its range of ground-launched Minotaur missiles, including the Minotaur 1 and 4 used for US government customers and the commercially available Minotaur-C. Joyce said these programs also share avionics and other components to reduce costs.
This cost reduction work does not yet take advantage of Northrop Grumman's resources, which is now available for the former Orbital ATK, but Joyce said they were beginning to explore these possibilities. "It's something we're looking at very hard right now," he said.
This cost reduction is a new urgency as new companies enter the market for small launchers, seeking to take advantage of demand primarily from small commercial satellites seeking the benefits of dedicated launches but at lower prices than existing vehicles. Many of these companies were on the same panel as Joyce of Northrop.
During this panel, the moderator asked companies how many small launchers the market could support. Responses ranged from three to less than ten. Five companies were represented.
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