Rockets

LAUNCH WINDOW Iridium and SpaceX have partnered to conduct eight different launches using the Falcon 9 rocket (below). That will put 75 satellites like the one seen on the opposite page into low-Earth orbit, creating a worldwide, always-on communications network.

JUST BEFORE DAWN ON A CLEAR DAY LAST FALL, A FALCON 9 rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company lit up the darkened sky as it blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. Ten small satellites made by McLean, Virginia-based Iridium Communications Inc. were packed into the tip of the rocket. A minute and 17 seconds into flight, mission controllers calmly called out, “Max Q,” a term describing the critical moment when the maximum amount of aerodynamic stress is bearing down on the rocket and its payload.

Matthew Desch, the 59-year-old CEO of Iridium, held his breath. Just four months before, a similar Falcon 9 had exploded on launch at Florida’s Cape Canaveral. “If you want to know what excitement is, you should be part of a company that has about $250 million of your assets at the top of a rocket that has just blown up,” Desch says. “That’s why I had people standing next to me — just in case I fell down.”

The Falcon 9 didn’t fail. Desch didn’t fall. Instead, he breathed a sigh of relief as the rocket successfully deployed 10 of what will be 75 satellites comprising the Iridium NEXT network. That’s the largest satellite constellation replacement ever attempted without interrupting current service. The $3 billion project began in 2009. If all goes well it will be completed in 2018.

So far so good for Iridium’s bold, nine-year-long initiative to replace its globe-encircling but aging satellite network with all new technology. SpaceX executed four successful satellite launches last year for the McLean company. And so far, it’s so good, too, for an expanding constellation of outer space businesses that have set up shop in the Greater Washington area. “The satellite industry is really based here in DC,” says Desch, who has been CEO of Iridium since 2009. “Everyone in the space industry has investments in the DC area, and even though some of the financing for space has moved to the West Coast, DC will be a hotbed of space activity over the next 10 to 20 years. Here, you can still be close to customers, like the Department of Defense and NASA, and you can be close to a lot of others who are in this industry. You have suppliers here, you have people who can design instruments and payloads for your systems here. This is where the industry is.”

And the industry is growing, too. Morgan Stanley estimates the space industry — currently valued at $261 billion in annual revenues — will be worth $1.1 trillion by 2040. Bank of America goes that number almost three times better, betting on a nearly $3 trillion commercial space market by that same time.

The Opportunity Anyone in the Washington region who wants to do business with those who are doing business in outer space will have plenty of potential partners to choose from. Here are four things you’ll need to know about the industry first.

1REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. The vehicles now being developed to get things and, eventually, people into space could not be more different. Virgin Orbit has a combination 747 and an attached rocket known as Cosmic Girl and LauncherOne. Boeing has a Space Shuttle-esque Phantom Express that carries a separate rocket on its back. And SpaceX has its Falcon line of rockets, which launch and then land using a flaming thrust. But all of those have one key component in common: They’re reusable.

“Reusability is going to help drive the resurgence of satellites being launched into space, because it is going to reduce the cost of getting to space,” Desch says. “It’s the linchpin of the industry’s future.”

LAUNCHES WILL BE LOCAL. A rocket may blast off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on a daily basis in the not-too-distant future. Located at NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia near Chincoteague and Assateague Islands, the site has been approved to offer launch facilities for commercial, government, scientific and academic users. The first blastoff there won’t happen until 2019. But its operator, Arizona-based Vector Space Systems, hopes that daily launches — of satellites and possibly space tourists — will follow soon after. 3

THE FUTURE IS IN SMALLER SATELLITES, AND PLENTY OF THEM. Iridium NEXT will comprise 75 satellites that provide instant communications to satellite phone users and digitally powered devices around the world. Iridium pioneered that type of mesh network approach to satellites at a time when satellites were the size of trucks. Today’s satellites can be the size of a chair or even smaller. That is helping companies like Iridium and Arlington-based OneWeb conceive of massive constellations — from 75 satellites to nearly 700 satellites — that will provide continual connections to people and devices like commercial airplanes or tsunami-sensing ocean buoys. “Our satellites will move to you,” says Desch. “Every eight seconds a new one will be overhead.”

ORBITAL ATK Space, defense, and aviation-related systems developer with headquarters in Dulles, Virginia. ILS Joint U.S.-Russian space mission management and launch services firm. U.S. operations based in Reston, Virginia.

HUGHES Satellite communications services provider with headquarters in Germantown, Maryland. (Subsidiary of California-based EchoStar.)

INTELSAT Luxembourg-based company operates its satellites from a command center in Tyson’s Corner.

NORTHRUP GRUMMAN, GENERAL DYNAMICS, LOCKHEED MARTIN

Major defense contractors, all playing major roles in Department of Defense satellite systems. General Dynamics’ SATCOM Technologies division is a leading firm in groundbased satellite communications arrays. Headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia (Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics), and Bethesda, Maryland.

AIREON Developing a global air traffic surveillance system that will use the Iridium NEXT satellite network to track planes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Headquarters in McLean, Virginia.

ONEWEB Planning to launch a massive array of satellites — nearly 700 in all — to build a global, space-based broadband network. Headquarters in Arlington.

AIRBUS & BOEING Commercial airplane manufacturers both working on space travel. Airbus headquarters for the Americas is in Dulles, Virginia. Boeing’s government operations office is in Arlington, Virginia.

NASA No longer launching manned space flights, but still the key governmental agency working with companies that want to get their products off the ground. Has headquarters near the U.S. Capitol and operates the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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