Launch Delays Causing Satellite Industry Woes

Inmarsat-5 F3, the third satellite in its Global Xpress constellation, was put up Friday by ILS, three months after its initial scheduled launch date. Spaceflight in an FCC International Bureau application earlier this month for special temporary authority for its planned launch of its Sherpa satellite deployment system (see 1508240011) said that launch would be between Jan. 15 and April 15, but it couldn't narrow that further because industry launch delays mean "uncertainties as to when future launches will occur." SES 9, scheduled to go up in July, remains in limbo because SpaceX hasn't resumed launches after the June explosion of a Falcon 9 en route to resupplying the International Space Station. EchoStar 21 was scheduled to go up early in 2016 on an ILS Proton rocket, but, given the delays already in ILS's manifest following the May failure of a launch carrying a Mexican communications satellite, the satellite company expects it also will be delayed, EchoStar Satellite Services President Anders Johnson said during an August conference call.

"The launch market is such that satellite operators are essentially hostage of what launchers decide to do or not do," Inmarsat Chief Technical Officer Michele Franci told us. "It is unfortunate because our business depends so much on something that could be much easier if there would be some evolution." Delayed launches mean delayed revenue for commercial operators. "For a satellite operator sitting there, out $200 million, $300 million [to have the satellite built], they're not terribly happy with longer waits," Farrar said. Those delays are starting to ripple into the satellite manufacturing world, as delayed orders were cited by Boeing as a reason this week for announced layoffs of hundreds, he said.

SpaceX hasn't set a return-to-flight date as it continues to investigate the June launch failure, though in July it said it expects to return to flight this fall and to make all its scheduled 2015 launches by the end of the year. "Delays like this occur," an SES spokesman told us. "It is not a drama. It is nothing that is changing the course of our business or our plans. More important than a couple weeks or months [of] delays is this thing goes up safely." Inmarsat, which used ILS for the first three Global Xpress launches, is planning to use SpaceX and its Falcon Heavy rocket for the fourth, though that rocket hasn't been certified, Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, Inmarsat senior vice president-government strategy and policy, told us. The launch delays were part of the consideration for changing from ILS, she said. "Any negotiated launch is based on a number of things," she said. "All those things come into play."

The market, not the regulatory structure, is the biggest problem, satellite experts said. "The governments stay pretty much out of the launch environment, they de-regulated in a good way," Intelsat's Franci said. "The real problem is launchers require very heavy investment, long-term investment. It is a risky business, so there are not that many of them. Since there are only so many launches in a given year worldwide, it's hard to maintain more than two or three players in a sustainable way." But there's some hope that federal export regulatory changes could open the door to employing Chinese launch services, which satellite operators now are restricted from using, Franci said.