Changing the Access to Space Calculus for SmallSats to Enable Industry Paradigm Shift

Abstract

Access to space has been a primary barrier to the widespread adoption of small satellite (smallsat) systems by the US Government and international commercial space industries. The current landscape continues to consist of the “launch cost/opportunity” dichotomy of infrequent launch opportunities for smallsats driving high launch costs for smallsats, which increases launch costs for small payloads, which reduces the number of smallsats that can afford launch. As a result, the US and international smallsat industry remains stunted, leaving the promise of the possibility of low-cost, resilient disaggregated space architectures as an unsubstantiated theory. However, several actionable steps can be made by the US Government and commercial space industry to dismantle the barriers to frequent, low-cost access to space for smallsats. This paper presents several specific actions that, if employed, would significantly change the current paradigm of space architectures of all sizes and mission areas. The paper presents the most effective use of three enabling practices that would substantially change the launch calculus to break the launch cost/opportunity dichotomy and enable frequent low-cost access to space for small satellites. The first of these three enablers is traditional ridesharing, which maximizes use of the excess capacity of the numerous launch opportunities that have the capability to accommodate additional rideshares on their primary missions. The paper describes the necessary approaches to minimizing impact to the primary mission that will increase the number of smallsat launch opportunities and drive down launch costs for all parties in the manifest. This includes the explaining the importance of decoupling the mission integration timeline of the secondary spacecraft from the primary spacecraft by implementing pre-analyzed and determined interfaces to reduce mission complexity and risk. The paper also describes other approaches that have proven successful in engendering a perspective of negligible risks of allowing smallsats to enter the mission manifest, such as containerization and verification/acceptance test approaches. The second enabling practice is to employ a dedicated rideshare (DRS) mission approach, which consists of a third-party integration (3PI) entity creating a launch services agreement with commercial launch vehicle (LV) providers, and then building a manifest of several spacecraft of various sizes. The paper outlines the specific details of the DRS approach to maximize the cost savings and schedule reliability of the mission, and minimize complexity and mission risks associated with this type of launch approach. Finally, this paper clearly describes how the simple action of creating a readily accessible, preestablished contract mechanism to allow Government spacecraft to exploit commercial launch opportunities will substantially and mutually benefit both the US Government, commercial and even international space industries. Specifically, the paper describes how implementing this enabler will drive down launch costs for Government and commercial smallsats, as well as reduce launch prices for all classes of spacecraft. The paper presents the compelling case of how this action will then result in the reduction of cost and risk of development and launch of even larger classes of spacecraft and change the entire space industry as a whole. Change must occur from the current practices of US Government and commercial space programs to decrease spacecraft development and launch costs, as well as increase the effectiveness and resilience of the system architectures of the future. The aim of this paper is to inform the decision makers of the US space industry of the enabling approaches to smallsat access to space that would facilitate their studies into the future architectures of their space systems. A lack of action will result in the eventual degradation