An RS1 rocket amplifier undergoes acceptance tests.
ABL Space
Rocket builder ABL Space has signed a long-term agreement for several pilots with Lockheed Martin and agreed to supply as many as 58 rockets to the defense giant by the end of the decade.
Lockheed Martin will buy ABL’s RS1 rockets by 2025, with an option for up to 32 additional launches by 2029, ABL announced Monday.
“With this assured access to space, we will have the ability to demonstrate the spacecraft and associated payload technologies we are developing to meet the future mission needs of our customers,” said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space, in said a press release.
ABL’s RS1 rocket fits in the middle of the launch market between Rocket Lab’s small Electron and SpaceX’s large Falcon 9 vehicle. RS1 is almost 90 feet long and is designed to send as much as 1,350 kg (1½ tons) of payload to a low orbit in the earth.
Lockheed Martin’s daring arm is one of ABL’s early investors, and the company has raised about $ 220 million in private capital so far, most of which made a round of T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Management last month at a valuation of $ 1.3 billion.
ABL declined to comment on the financial terms of the contract. Based on ABL’s $ 12 million price tag for an RS1 rocket, the deal with Lockheed Martin is estimated to be worth nearly $ 700 million over eight years, assuming the maximum number of launches.
A fully integrated RS1 second phase in test fire at Edwards Air Force Base in 2020
ABL Space
Because ABL’s rockets use a mobile ground system called GS0 that can pack in several cargo containers, Lockheed Martin can use a variety of launch facilities around the world – including US Space Force facilities in Vandenberg in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida.
While the defense giant did not specify what missions he plans to launch with ABL’s rockets, Lockheed Martin announced earlier in February that he had chosen ABL to launch a mission from Scotland in 2022. In addition, Lockheed Martin last month signed a strategic partnership with a satellite launcher. -up Omnispace, with the latter company planning to launch a constellation of satellites to build a 5G communications network in space.
The big contract represents a coup for ABL in the medium-lift segment of the launch market, where the company competes with Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, which reached an orbit a few months ago.
Other competitors in the arena include Relativity Space and Firefly Aerospace, which are set to launch for the first time later this year. Meanwhile, Rocket Lab is developing a medium-lift rocket called Neutron, which it is expected to launch by 2024.
ABL is still working on the introductory RS1 launch from Vandenberg.
While ABL had previously hoped to be ready as early as March, President Dan Piemont said the company now has a target for flight readiness by June. The rocket builder recently completed the acceptance test on the first RS1 fuel tank, but Piemont said ABL expects the required approvals from the launch site to delay the first launch attempt until the third quarter of this year.