Orbital Express Launch Ltd., or Orbex, is a United Kingdom-based

aerospace company An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry. ...

that is developing a small commercial orbital rocket called Prime. Orbex is headquartered in

Forres Forres (; gd, Farrais) is a town and former royal burgh in the north of Scotland on the Moray coast, approximately northeast of Inverness and west of Elgin. Forres has been a winner of the Scotland in Bloom award on several occasions. There ...

, Moray, in Scotland and has subsidiaries in Denmark and Germany. Its future launch complex is proposed to be built on the

A' Mhòine A' Mhòine () is a peninsula in the Highlands, Scotland. The peninsula is bounded to the west by Loch Eriboll, and to the east by the Kyle of Tongue. The A838 road crosses the peninsula on an east–west axis. Much of the peninsula is owned by ...

peninsula in the county of

Sutherland Sutherland ( gd, Cataibh) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the Highlands of Scotland. Its county town is Dornoch. Sutherland borders Caithness and Moray Firth to the east, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire ( ...

, northern Scotland.

Overview

The company was founded in 2015 as Moonspike Ltd., with the goal of crowdfunding a private spacecraft mission to the moon. A

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

campaign running from 1 October to 1 November 2015 raised less than £79,000 ($122,000) out of a goal of £600,000 ($925,000), rendering Moonspike ineligible for the funds. Moonspike was renamed Orbital Express Launch Ltd. in 2016, with the company now aiming to provide commercial launch services of nano- and microsatellites, especially

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSat ...

s, to polar and sun-synchronous low Earth orbits. In July 2018, Orbex secured £30 million ($39.6 million) in public and private funding for the development of its orbital rocket system, named Prime. As of 2020, Orbex have raised a total of $69 million in funds. Orbex has opened a factory for Prime in Scotland that will eventually employ 150 people. Currently, the company is working on developing the Prime vehicle, while preparing for the initial launch from the Sutherland spaceport. The Sutherland spaceport in northern Scotland was initially intended to be shared with Lockheed Martin, who at the time did not have a launch vehicle, but their strategic shareholding in Rocket Lab led to speculation that they would launch with the Rocket Lab

Electron rocket Electron is a two-stage, partially recoverable orbital launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, an American aerospace company with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. Electron was developed to service the commercial small satellite launch mar ...

, but since the two vehicles (Electron and Prime) use different propellants, the two companies would have separate

launch pad A launch pad is an above-ground facility from which a rocket-powered missile or space vehicle is vertically launched. The term ''launch pad'' can be used to describe just the central launch platform ( mobile launcher platform), or the ent ...

s while sharing some common infrastructure. The planning application for the site, however, includes only one launchpad. Lockheed Martin then moved their launch plans to a competing site in the Shetland Isles. Orbex also plans to launch from a future spaceport in the Portuguese

Azores ) , motto= ( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace") , anthem=( en, "Anthem of the Azores") , image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg , map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union , map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...

Prime

Orbex is currently developing a light launch vehicle called Prime, and its booster (1st stage) is planned to be reusable. The rocket's diameter is , and will use a non-toxic bi-propellant consisting of

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an a ...

and

propane Propane () is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula . It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is commonly used as ...

. One cited advantage of using propane is that it remains liquid at cryogenic temperatures, which enables a design where a central carbon-fibre tank of propane is surrounded by an outer tank of liquid oxygen, creating a light structural mass. It will be capable of launching payloads up to to a standard 500 km

Sun-synchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it ...

. The maiden flight of Prime is expected to occur in 2023, subject to the availability of Space Hub Sutherland and a

Civil Aviation Authority A civil aviation authority (CAA) is a national or supranational statutory authority that oversees the regulation of civil aviation, including the maintenance of an aircraft register. Role Due to the inherent dangers in the use of flight vehicles ...

launch license, for

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, or SSTL, is a company involved in the manufacture and operation of small satellites. A spin-off company of the University of Surrey, it is presently wholly owned by Airbus Defence and Space. The company began ou ...

. Orbex also announced it was chosen by

nanosatellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites ca ...

startup Astrocast to launch their communications satellites.

References

{{Orbital launch systems Microsatellite launch vehicles Private spaceflight companies Space launch vehicles of the United Kingdom

Overview

Prime

See also

References