\u201cReally, really busy.\u201d That\u2019s how launch providers described manifests for the next two years during a conversation on heavy-lift launch competition at SATShow on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
SpaceX<\/strong> is looking at a \u201cpacked\u201d manifest from 2026 through 2028, and a \u201cvery busy\u201d 2029, said Stephanie Bednarek, vice president of Commercial Sales at SpaceX. After launching 165 missions in 2025, the company is continuing to execute on Falcon 9 while working toward operational Starship launches.<\/p>\n Arianespace<\/strong>, which marked the first flight of Ariane 64 in February, is looking to double its launch cadence in the coming years, targeting seven to eight launches in 2026 and reaching nine to 10 in 2027. Based on demand, the company is prioritizing flights on the Ariane 64 heavy-lift and fewer on the medium-lift Ariane 62.<\/p>\n Arianespace CEO David Cavaillol\u00e8s said he believes the current schedule \u201ccan cover European institutions\u201d as well as commercial demand. \u201cOf course, depending on how things go \u2026 we might consider going up beyond 10 flights per year.\u201d<\/p>\n Blue Origin<\/strong> continues to ramp up capacity and cadence on New Glenn after successfully landing its first reusable first-stage booster in November with NG-2 launching NASA\u2019s ESCAPADE Mars mission.<\/p>\n Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn for Blue Origin described the success as \u201ca gamechanger\u201d for the company. Blue Origin is now refurbishing the booster and preparing to launch NG-3 \u201cin a few weeks,\u201d carrying AST SpaceMobile\u2019s BlueBird Block 2 satellites.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of demand,\u201d said Maginnis. \u201cA lot of customers looking for significant scale, significant volume and mass to orbit and we believe that system is really going to provide for that market.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Maginnis anticipates the new super-heavy New Glenn 9\u00d74 will be rolled out \u201cin the coming years,\u201d with four boosters and a larger 8.7-meter fairing to deliver 70 metric tons to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).<\/p>\n United Launch Alliance<\/strong> (ULA) is primarily focused on \u201coperationalizing\u201d the Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift rocket after experiencing a performance anomaly in February related to a malfunction of one of four solid rocket motors.<\/p>\n According to COO Mark Peller, ULA is \u201cburning off\u201d its Atlas V backlog in the early part of this year and working to transition customers from Atlas to Vulcan.<\/p>\n \u201cBeyond our initial flights, we\u2019ve been putting a tremendous amount of effort into increasing our capacity,\u201d Peller said. ULA has doubled payload processing infrastructure at its Eastern launch site and will bring its West Coast launch site online later this year with modifications to serve Vulcan, Peller said.<\/p>\n Mitsubishi Heavy Industries<\/strong> (MHI) is currently targeting a launch cadence of eight per year on its H3 heavy-lift rocket by the end of 2028. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to increase the launch status gradually, year by year,\u201d said Nobuyuki Shiina, deputy general manager of MHI, noting the Japanese government set a goal of 30 domestic launches per year from all providers. \u201cWe feel like there\u2019s such a big demand here in Japan, Asia and onward,\u201d said Shiina.<\/p>\n Mitsubishi Heavy Industries\u2019 (MHI) H3 rocket has completed five successful launches and two failures, one of which occurred in December resulting in payload loss. Shiina described the anomaly as \u201climited\u201d with manageable technical challenges to remedy the issue.<\/p>\n Launch providers reported strains from growing commercial demand from multiple megaconstellation deployments, sovereign launch and ambitious civil space programs.<\/p>\n According to Bednarek, the launch vehicle is not the only bottleneck. \u201cA unique situation that we\u2019re looking at right now is that rockets don\u2019t seem to be the limiting factor. It\u2019s more about payload processing space,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Satellite manufacturers that initially contract for launch are posting delays, requiring flexibility on the part of launch providers, Bedneck continued.<\/p>\n Cavaillol\u00e8s dismissed the idea that an increasing number of launch providers and vehicles would saturate the market. \u201cIt is absolutely a situation of scarcity,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it will be the case for years and year because the satellite projects are more and more ambitious.\u201d<\/p>\n In the near-term, the biggest source of demand is commercial space rather than government, according to Cavaillol\u00e8s, noting that IRIS\u00b2, facing delays, would produce more demand in the mid-term. Arianespace is responding to a growing commercial demand with new and bigger boosters on the Ariane 64 that it says provide 10% to 15% more performance.<\/p>\n Maginnis described \u201ca huge amount of commercial demand relative to DoD [Department of Defense] demand.\u201d DoD demand has remained stable, she noted, but plans for Golden Dome could change that in the future.<\/p>\n Even with tight manifests and soaring demand, providers were excited by NASA\u2019s Tuesday announcement that it would build a $20 billion \u200cbase on the Moon\u2019s surface over the next seven years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is going to require a lot of mass into space, a lot of mass to the surface of the moon,\u201d said Bedneck, citing SpaceX support for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.<\/p>\n Blue Origin, whose Mark 1 lunar lander undergoing thermal vacuum endurance trials, is encouraged by the lunar plan. \u201cWe have significant infrastructure to support what\u2019s being asked of us right now,\u201d said Maginnis.<\/p>\n Launch providers are also monitoring reports of a SpaceX IPO, which could debut at over $1.75 trillion. Several leaders agreed the listing could be a catalyst for further investment into the sector.<\/p>\n \u201cOur sector is gaining speed,\u201d said Cavaillol\u00e8s. \u201cWe see more and more of public budget. We see also growing private investment, which is positive.\u201d He added that the SpaceX IPO is likely to motivate European markets to increase investment.<\/p>\n Peller agreed that the IPO would have a positive spillover effect. \u201cI think it benefits all of us, whether or not we\u2019re involved directly in an IPO or not, bringing that additional capital to market,\u201d he said. \u201cOne aspect is that capital flows through all of us. It helps strengthen our industrial base, which we all benefit from.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cReally, really busy.\u201d That\u2019s how launch providers described manifests for the next two years during a conversation on heavy-lift launch competition at SATShow on Tuesday. SpaceX is looking at a \u201cpacked\u201d manifest from 2026 through 2028, and a \u201cvery busy\u201d 2029, said Stephanie Bednarek, vice president of Commercial Sales at SpaceX. After launching 165 missions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018A Situation of Scarcity\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n
SpaceX IPO Could Boost Launch Sector<\/strong><\/h3>\n