The successful March 17 launch of the European Space Agency
(ESA) GOCE Earth observation satellite aboard a Russian Rockot vehicle was a
life-saving event for Eurockot Launch Services GmbH, the German-Russian company
that sells commercial launches on the converted ICBM.
The launch
followed the October 2005 failure of the last Eurockot mission for ESA,
when a Rockot
vehicle sent the Cryosat satellite into the ocean in the Arctic Circle even
as launch teams continued to broadcast a launch success to ESA officials.
Since then, a series
of delays relating to Rockot's Breeze upper stage and other factors had delayed the GOCE
satellite so long that mission teams feared they would be forced to change
the satellite's orbit, a decision that would have reduced the scientific
harvest. In addition, Russian inflation during the same period forced Bremen,
Germany-based Eurockot to increase its prices abruptly.
A mild solar cycle has permitted GOCE to remain in its
intended orbit, and Eurockot hopes other events out of its control will help it
solidify its relations with ESA. GOCE
is designed to operate in a very low orbit where the residual atmosphere
creates drag on the satellite; a more intense solar cycle would have caused
more expansion of the atmosphere, increasing the drag on the satellite and thus
forcing ESA to place it into a higher orbit.
"We have lost credibility in the last three years with the
failure and with the delays and the high inflation rate that has forced us to
about double our prices," Matthias Oehn, Eurockot's chief executive, said in a
March 17 interview here at ESA's Esrin Earth observation center. "What we need
most of all now is to regain ESA's confidence."
Eurockot is 51 percent owned by Astrium, the prime
contractor for Europe's Ariane 5 rocket, and 49 percent by Khrunichev State
Research and Production Space Center of Moscow, which converts Rockot, based on
the SS-19 ballistic missile, into a space-launch vehicle and manufactures the
Breeze upper stage.
Khrunichev is also prime contractor for Russia's heavy-lift
Proton rocket, which uses some of the same upper-stage engines as Rockot, as
does Russia's Soyuz rocket.
Proton and Soyuz both launch much more frequently than
Rockot, and both have the strong backing from the Russian government. The
result has been that Rockot occasionally finds itself at the bottom of the
priority list in the Russian rocket component supply chain.
With Earth observation now taking an increasingly important
role at ESA, the agency is becoming a large customer for launch vehicles
tailored to place satellites weighing less than 3,000 kilograms into polar low
Earth orbit.
Volker Liebig, ESA's director of Earth observation, said ESA
has 24 Earth observation satellites it will be launching in the next 10 years,
including spacecraft financed by the Eumetsat meteorological organization of
Darmstadt, Germany.
"As we have seen, one of the biggest challenges of our
program has been to find suitable launch vehicles," Liebig said here March 16.
"This remains a real concern for us."
Some of these satellites, including the Meteosat Third
Generation satellites, are beyond Rockot's weight and orbit range. But many
others are around the 1,500-kilogram, 700-kilometer polar Earth orbit
specifications that are Rockot's core business.
Rockot's immediate challenge is to regain the confidence of
ESA's Earth observation directorate before ESA's Vega rocket — a direct Rockot
competitor — enters service in 2010.
Eurockot is scheduled to launch ESA's Soil Moisture and
Ocean Salinity, or SMOS, satellite late this year. Oehm said the company is
hopeful that a glitch-free launch will persuade ESA to retain Rockot at least as a Vega backup in the coming years.
Another possible Eurockot advantage is that it may be able
to reduce its prices given the slide in the value of the Russian ruble against
the euro and the U.S. dollar in recent months. Khrunichev recently has cut
Proton prices for launching commercial telecommunications satellites because of
the ruble's decline.
Oehm said he could not speculate on whether a similar price
cut would be possible for Rockot launches.
