How do commercial satellites, such as those used by satellite radio or television get into the air? Are they launched by NASA or a private company? How much does it cost? What happens if something goes wrong? Is there an international body who decides what parts of the sky certain companies are allowed to place their satellites?
Thanks for any insight.
More often than not, they’re launched either from France or Russia. The French have great success with their Ariane series of boosters, as has Kazakhstan with their Proton rockets.
If something goes wrong, this sort of endeavor is usually insured by Lloyds with a bewildering web of contingencies. (As in, one person in the syndicate will pay $50,000 if the second stage booster explodes, but only $10,000 if the first stage explodes, but only if they launch on a Wednesday. Another will pay $500,000, if the satellite doesn’t deploy properly after a successful launch, and so on.)
The United Nations handles a lot of international cooperation with regards to space, and they maintain an index of what’s up there.
Launch costs are in the area of $12,000 per pound, with the overall launch costing around $20 million for small payloads like communications satellites. That $12,000 per pound includes the weight of the rocket and its fuel, as opposed to just the weight of the satellite.
A polar-orbiting weather satellite, all by its lonesome, is on the close order of 1500kg. There’s no way that you can put together an orbital-class rocket that only weighs 1667 pounds including (a useful) payload.
Are you sure the $12k/lb isn’t just based on the payload mass?
Boeing Launch Services and Sea Launch have launched many satellites, from DirecTV communication sats to Digital Globe’s Quickbird imaging satellite. They usually go up on one of the Delta rockets that Boeing builds. Costs vary a lot based on how high of an orbit and the payload. This article has a handy chart near the bottom that gives some rough estimates though. I don’t know where the other poster got $12,000 per pound for not just payload but the entire rocket. I’d like to see a cite for that.
NASA also regulates what satellites can be launched from the US. I saw a program on Discovery in which they discussed the danger of things like paint flaking off into a stable orbit, and other debris which they think was responsible for the loss of a French satellite.
To be sure, the French ones aren’t launched from France, but from French Guiana.
A group here in the physics department is launching a 1 kg satellite with total launch costs of about $30k. Mind you, they’re not the primary payload on their launch, but apparently someone considers $30k to be a fair price for an extra kilogram of payload.