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Weight and size miniaturization of this thing sound pretty badass to me. JAXA seems in a good position here. Does this havr any effects on Electron, i.e. grab a

Weight and size miniaturization of this thing sound pretty badass to me. JAXA seems in a good position here. Does this havr any effects on Electron, i.e. grab away the low end of their market?

syedkarim 9y ago
This seems to be a JAXA (Japanese NASA) project, so I am guessing commercializing isn't a priority, which is sad. But now that they've shown that an overgrown sounding rocket built with pretty standard technology can get to orbit, maybe there will be others closely following. Note: Although the Electron has heritage from a sounding rocket, it is a completely new breed of animal.
baybal2 9y ago
Much more on Chinese solid fuel lvs from X-Space and Russian second hand, repurposed icbms
azernik 9y ago
This aims for an even smaller-sat market than Electron. Electron is going for about 200kg, for $6M per launch - a bit impractical for cubesat manufacturers unless they're willing to blow a lot of their propellant budget on an initial orbit change. This is aiming at around 5kg to orbit for about 500k - more expensive per kg, but allows a cubesat customer like Planet Labs to get their preferred orbit per-satellite. In the space business Electron payloads would be called minisats, while SS-520-4 payloads would be called nanosats.
- planteen 9y ago
  Electron can launch many CubeSats at once with a dispenser. So saying it can't do CubeSat class is not correct. This is what the upcoming NASA ELaNa XIX is doing: https://www.nasa.gov/content/upcoming-elana-cubesat-launches https://www.nasa.gov/content/upcoming-elana-cubesat-launches It also possible to have CubeSats in different orbits by timing the dispensing of the CubeSats and also the attitude of the launch vehicle at dispensing time.
  - azernik 9y ago
    I didn't say it couldn't be used with CubeSats; I said that it could require the customer to use a lot of propellant to change the orbit if they wanted a different trajectory than the main customer or than the rest of the cluster. That last option you mentioned could be helpful, but only for small orbit variations. If you want 10 cubesats in orbit with wildly different inclinations like many Earth Observation customers do, that's a bit inconvenient.
    - planteen 9y ago
      You can do quite a bit with timing on the launch vehicle. A delay of ~45 minutes in SSO is the opposite side of the planet. And do any of the Planet CubeSats even have propulsion? It looks like the Flock constellation deployed without it. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm
      - THE_PUN_STOPS 9y ago
        Mechanical Engineer working with CubeSats here. No CubeSat launched to date has carried a propulsion system. (Aside from air drag brakes to deorbit, I think someone launched at least one of those)
        planteen 9y ago
        That's interesting none have launched with propulsion yet. I remember talk about the VACCO system when I was doing CubeSats a few years ago but it doesn't look like they are on-orbit yet.
      - azernik 9y ago
        That delay leaves you halfway around the planet, in the same orbit. Unless you give the satellite a good chunk of a kilometer/second of delta-v, you're not going to have any different of an inclination, and waiting half an orbit doesn't save you any propellant on apogee raising/lowering maneuvers for either permanent change of orbit or for phasing purposes.

Weight and size miniaturization of this thing sound pretty badass to me. JAXA seems in a good position here. Does this havr any effects on Electron, i.e. grab away the low end of their market?

syedkarim 9y ago

This seems to be a JAXA (Japanese NASA) project, so I am guessing commercializing isn't a priority, which is sad. But now that they've shown that an overgrown sounding rocket built with pretty standard technology can get to orbit, maybe there will be others closely following. Note: Although the Electron has heritage from a sounding rocket, it is a completely new breed of animal.

baybal2 9y ago

Much more on Chinese solid fuel lvs from X-Space and Russian second hand, repurposed icbms

azernik 9y ago

This aims for an even smaller-sat market than Electron. Electron is going for about 200kg, for $6M per launch - a bit impractical for cubesat manufacturers unless they're willing to blow a lot of their propellant budget on an initial orbit change. This is aiming at around 5kg to orbit for about 500k - more expensive per kg, but allows a cubesat customer like Planet Labs to get their preferred orbit per-satellite. In the space business Electron payloads would be called minisats, while SS-520-4 payloads would be called nanosats.

planteen 9y ago
Electron can launch many CubeSats at once with a dispenser. So saying it can't do CubeSat class is not correct. This is what the upcoming NASA ELaNa XIX is doing: https://www.nasa.gov/content/upcoming-elana-cubesat-launches https://www.nasa.gov/content/upcoming-elana-cubesat-launches It also possible to have CubeSats in different orbits by timing the dispensing of the CubeSats and also the attitude of the launch vehicle at dispensing time.
- azernik 9y ago
  I didn't say it couldn't be used with CubeSats; I said that it could require the customer to use a lot of propellant to change the orbit if they wanted a different trajectory than the main customer or than the rest of the cluster. That last option you mentioned could be helpful, but only for small orbit variations. If you want 10 cubesats in orbit with wildly different inclinations like many Earth Observation customers do, that's a bit inconvenient.
  - planteen 9y ago
    You can do quite a bit with timing on the launch vehicle. A delay of ~45 minutes in SSO is the opposite side of the planet. And do any of the Planet CubeSats even have propulsion? It looks like the Flock constellation deployed without it. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm
    - THE_PUN_STOPS 9y ago
      Mechanical Engineer working with CubeSats here. No CubeSat launched to date has carried a propulsion system. (Aside from air drag brakes to deorbit, I think someone launched at least one of those)
      - planteen 9y ago
        That's interesting none have launched with propulsion yet. I remember talk about the VACCO system when I was doing CubeSats a few years ago but it doesn't look like they are on-orbit yet.
    - azernik 9y ago
      That delay leaves you halfway around the planet, in the same orbit. Unless you give the satellite a good chunk of a kilometer/second of delta-v, you're not going to have any different of an inclination, and waiting half an orbit doesn't save you any propellant on apogee raising/lowering maneuvers for either permanent change of orbit or for phasing purposes.