Spaceflight Inc Engages In Rideshare Projects

Spaceflight Inc Engages In Rideshare Projects

Spaceflight Inc. has announced that it will launch a new Orbital Transfer Vehicle called the Sherpa-FX on a dedicated rideshare mission on a SpaceX Falcon rocket. This is the first of a planned next-generation of transfer vehicles being develop by Spaceflight Inc. The Sherpa is a next-generation transfer vehicle capable of multiple deployments which provide independent deployment telemetry. It also features a flexible payload interface. It is based on the design of the Sherpa payload adapter which was utilized on the SSO-A in December of 2018. On this mission, it successfully delivered sixty-four different spacecraft to Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
     The Sherpa vehicle allows multiple small and micro satellites to be deployed simultaneously into multiple Earth orbits. The Sherpa-FX is the first member of Spaceflight’s Sherpa-Next Generation program which will ultimately comprise a whole family of new space vehicles. 
     The Sherpa-FX will be launched on a fully dedicated rideshare mission on a Falcon 9 rocket. This Sherpa mission, dubbed SXRS-3, will carry sixteen spacecraft for a variety of different organizations. Customers include iQPS Inc, Loft Orbital, HawkEye 360, NASA, Astrocast, and the University of South Florida. The Shepa will also carry multiple hosted payloads for customers including Celestis Inc, NearSpace Launch, Keplerian Technologies, Tiger Innovations, and Space Domain Awareness Inc.  Many of these hosted payloads are intended to be technology demonstrations that are designed to help identify and track spacecraft that have been previously deployed. There technologies will assist Spaceflight customers to mitigate space congestion and provide the foundation for effective and responsible space  traffic management.
      Grant Bonin is the senior vice president of business development for Spaceflight Inc. “Spaceflight is committed to providing unmatched launch flexibility for customers — whether that’s re-manifesting on a different vehicle due to delays, deployments to exotic or special orbits, or the ability to fly and operate hosted payloads.”
     “In-space transportation is essential to meeting our customer’s specific needs to get their spacecraft delivered to orbit exactly when and where they want it. If you think of typical rideshare as sharing a seat on a train headed to a popular destination, our next-generation Sherpa program enables us to provide a more complete ‘door-to-door transportation service.’”
      The SXRS-3 mission is the third of three planned SpaceX rideshare missions that were announced in April of 2019. The first mission, SXRS-1 will launch a pair of BlackSky Earth Observation satellites with the tenths batch of the Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida after July of this year. A multiple launch agreement between Spaceflight and SpaceX was announced in June of this year which is the second of the SXRS missions.
     The SXRS-3 mission will fly on the SpaceX SSO-1 launch no earlier than December of this year. SSO-1 is the first of many dedicated rideshare mission to Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO) that SpaceX is launching under their rideshare program. This program allows low-cost rides to space on a Falcon 9 rocket. There will be missions to both SSO and secondary payloads on Starlink missions to Low Earth Orbit.
    Curt Blake is the president, and CEO of Spaceflight. “We aim to make getting to space easier, faster, and with more reliability than ever before. To do that, we have to build flexibility into everything we offer — from our contracting practices to integration processes that enable spacecraft to move seamlessly between launch vehicles, to providing customers with a wide range of mission services. Now we’re solving some of the industry’s most pressing challenges by providing greater spacecraft management awareness and customized orbital delivery. We couldn’t be more excited to expand our comprehensive suite of launch services to support our customers’ mission needs.”