Upstart Wins Bid to Launch Satellites for Iridium Project
A young San Bernardino company, Kelly Space & Technology Inc., said Monday that it has won an $89-million contract to use its novel rocket-launching procedure to lift 20 replacement satellites for Motorola Inc.’s Iridium global satellite network.
Kelly--founded three years ago by two TRW Inc. alumni, Michael Kelly and Michael Gallo--plans to use an airplane to tow its Eclipse rocket launcher to 40,000 feet, where the launcher will ignite and then climb higher to place two satellites in low Earth orbit at a time.
The procedure eliminates the expensive installation and maintenance of a launch pad, which is why Kelly contends that its launch costs--roughly $9 million per trip in the case of Iridium--are cheaper than conventional rocket launches.
Iridium is the proposed $3.4-billion, 66-satellite venture that expects to provide cellular-telephone service and other telecommunications around the globe. The first of its satellites is expected to be launched (on a McDonnell Douglas Delta 2 rocket) early next year, with service beginning in 1998.
Kelly said its first Iridium launch would be 1999 at the earliest.
Still, many analysts had thought the market for launching such satellites was sewn up by firms such as Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas and Orbital Sciences, which has launched a number of payloads aboard its Pegasus rocket that’s initially carried aloft under the belly of a jetliner, said Peter Aseritis, an analyst with CS First Boston in New York.
Kelly’s entrance shows the market it still not mature with a dominant cast of players, he said.
Nonetheless, launching rockets is a risky enterprise, particularly when it comes to a newly designed vehicle. “It is not easy to design a launch vehicle that works,” said Ray Williamson, senior research scientist at George Washington University. “A year ago I would have said we know what this market was, but what we are seeing is an opening up.”
