Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Spaceflight Extends Services To Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit

Seattle-based Spaceflight, which helps coordinate shared rides into space for satellites, said this week that it is expanding its suite of services to include ridesharing launches to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). According to Spaceflight, it expects to offer rideshare opportunities to GTO approximately every 12-18 months, or as "customer demand" requires. Spaceflight helps satellite developers reduce the cost of their launches, by helping to arrange rides to space as a "secondary mission" to other launches. According to SpaceX, it will launch its first, Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) mission from a SpaceX Falcon 9, launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. GTO launches are particularly difficult, due to the complexity of placing satellites into space in the right place.