Launch Vehicles and Launch Sites

Abstract

The Handbook of Satellite Applications focuses on the practical applications of satellites. This means that the handbook addresses the many uses that are made of communications, remote sensing, satellite navigation, and meteorological systems as well as the spacecraft, the ground systems, and tracking, telemetry, and command systems that make these networks possible. There are also chapters that address regulatory issues, economic and insurance issues, and even threats to the future operation of application satellites. This chapter addresses the remaining critical areas that are critical to the successful operation of application satellite systems.

All types of applications satellites could not carry out their function unless they were first launched into the right orbit. Even after successful launch they must also be properly maintained there through necessary station-keeping operations. This chapter addresses the history of rocket and launch vehicle development and explains the basic technical capabilities that allow applications satellites to be placed into orbit with greater and greater reliability. This chapter also briefly addresses in-orbit operations that allow spacecraft to be maintained in orbit and to operate over increasingly long practical lifetimes. Over the past 60 years of the space age, an expanding variety of different propulsion systems and launch systems have been developed to carry out the important tasks of launch, station-keeping, and deorbit or removal of spacecraft to a graveyard orbital location.

One of the key elements of success for applications satellites of all types is the fact that gradually the reliability and the lift capability of launch vehicles have improved over time. It has been hoped for many years that new technology could allow the cost of launches to be significantly reduced, but to date such breakthroughs in the economics of launch systems have not yet been achieved. The precision thruster systems that allow spacecraft to be pointed with ever greater precision and to maintain crucial station-keeping have quite successfully continued to evolve. This has allowed application satellites to operate for much longer lifetimes and with greater pointing accuracy that has increased their functionality. Further developments that have most recently occurred in launch systems and new commercial launch sites are addressed in the following chapter.