The first stage of the company’s RS1 missile after the completion of welding.
ABL Space
Lockheed Martin selected Los Angeles-based rocket builder ABL Space to launch a mission from Scotland within two years, the defense contractor announced Monday.
The companies said the launch, scheduled for 2022, would be the first satellite launch from the UK and, more broadly, the first ever from European soil. The mission is made possible thanks to a grant from the UK Space Agency’s “Pathfinder Launch” program, which launches the rocket from the Scottish island of Unst in the Shetland Islands.
“We want the UK to be the first in Europe to launch small satellites into orbit, attract innovative companies from around the world, accelerate the development of new technologies and create hundreds of highly skilled jobs across the UK,” the Ian Annett, the agency’s deputy CEO, said in a statement.
Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm is ABL Space, which is working on the first launch from California in the first half of this year. ABL is building small rockets, which fit in size between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and small launch vehicle Rocket Lab in the marketplace, raising nearly $ 100 million in venture capital and contract awards ahead of the UK award.
ABL’s RS1 rocket is 28 feet long and is designed to launch a whopping 1,350 kilograms (or almost 1½ tons) of payload into low Earth orbit – at a cost of $ 12 million per launch. ABL’s position at the center of the commercial launch market puts ABL in competition with other companies such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, Relativity Space and Firefly Aerospace. Notably, Virgin Orbit has also announced plans to launch a mission from an airport in Cornwall, England as early as 2022.
A fully integrated RS1 second stage in test firing at Edwards Air Force Base in 2020.
ABL Space
The RS1 launch from Scotland will carry a spacecraft built by Britain’s MOOG, which will deploy six small satellites, two of which will be technology demonstrations built by Lockheed Martin.
“We have selected ABL Space Systems for the UK Pathfinder Launch to leverage the flexibility of ABL’s integrated GSO launch system – and RS1 missile – allowing us to get to our new site quickly,” said Randy DeRosa, Lockheed Martin program manager. UK Pathfinder Launch. said in a statement. “The ABL system is relatively simple, quick and cost effective to deploy, with fantastic performance, an important opportunity for many of our future customers.”
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