PARIS - Europe's
Arianespace commercial launch consortium has begun making multiple minor
adjustments to its Ariane 5 ECA rocket that should result in a 400-kilogram
increase in the vehicle's commercial payload-carrying power by the end of 2010,
according to the company's annual report.
The
increased capacity would enable the Ariane 5 ECA to lift
two telecommunications satellites weighing a combined 9,100 kilograms into
geostationary transfer orbit.
Arianespace
Chief Executive Jean-Yves Le Gall said April 9 that the performance
enhancements will not include any hardware changes, but only minor
modifications in how the vehicle is flown, such as letting the upper-stage
engine burn longer before releasing the satellites.
Evry,
France-based Arianespace occasionally has trouble matching two satellites to
fill the Ariane 5 vehicle, and recently the company has been booking a large
number of satellites weighing less than 3,500 kilograms.
Improving
performance by 400 kilograms will facilitate "passenger pairings for each
mission and also more completely [fill] the available capacity," according to
the company.
In its
annual report, Arianespace said it had agreed to make an unforeseen additional
investment in preparing Russia's Soyuz rocket for operations from Europe's
Guiana Space Center spaceport after receiving an informal agreement from the
European Space Agency (ESA) to "re-evaluate" the price ESA will pay for Soyuz
launches of ESA satellites.
Arianespace
hopes to conduct the inaugural flight of Soyuz from the European installation
late this year, but the late arrival from Russia of a mobile gantry may force
the launch to slip into 2010. Le Gall said the gantry is now expected to be
shipped by sea to the Guiana Space Center spaceport from St. Petersburg by late
April and arrive in mid-May still in time for a December inaugural flight.
Arianespace agreed in 2005 to invest
121 million euros ($163 million) of its own money, through a loan
from the European Investment Bank, to purchase Soyuz rockets from its Russian
manufacturers in an agreement approved by the French and Russian governments.
ESA is financing the construction of the Soyuz launch pad.
Le Gall
said "several million euros" of additional costs incurred by Arianespace
because of Soyuz delays will be passed on to ESA in the form of higher launch
prices for the agency's first 10 or 15 Soyuz launch campaigns.
Arianespace
reported a net profit of 2.5 million euros on revenue of 955.7 million euros in
2008, its sixth consecutive profit-making year.
Most of Arianespace's shareholders
are either the French government or industrial manufacturers of Ariane 5 rocket
hardware. The company uses its cash to purchase hardware and services from
these companies rather than to pay shareholder dividends.
"Three main performance indicators
apply to Arianespace: the order book, the number of launches and net income,"
the company said in its annual report.
Arianespace conducted six Ariane 5 launch
campaigns in 2008, the same number as in 2007. But the 2008 manifest
included ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle, a large unmanned cargo carrier that
was sent to the international space station. That launch generated more revenue
for Arianespace than standard commercial missions, enabling the company to
increase 2008 revenue by 3.5 percent in 2008 compared to 2007.
Arianespace
in February ordered a batch of 35 Ariane 5 ECA rockets from an industrial
consortium led by Astrium Space Transportation, a contract the company valued
at more than 4 billion euros. But only 10 of these vehicles were firmly
financed, with dollar-euro exchange-rate coverage to protect against a future
decline in U.S. dollar values.
The first
10 launches, according to Le Gall, also include an ESA contribution of "several
million euros per launch" that is paid by the agency's Ariane 5 Research and
Technology Accompaniment Program. The so-called MCO costs, for the French
acronym for Maintenance of Operational Conditions, assure that the Ariane 5
vehicle's ground-test facilities are kept up to date.
Le Gall said Arianespace, its
industrial contractors and ESA are negotiating whether ESA will fund MCO costs
and if so at what level for the remaining 25 vehicles in the 35-rocket
order. A billion-euro support package financed by ESA to offset certain Ariane
5-related fixed costs is set to expire in 2010. Le Gall said he expected ESA to
settle on an MCO support level for the remaining vehicles sometime this year.
