Status Report

2004 FAA/COMSTAC NGSO Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts

By SpaceRef Editor

May 21, 2004

Filed under Commerce, FAA, US

Executive Summary

The Federal Aviation Administration’s
Associate Administrator for Commercial
Space Transportation (FAA/AST) and the
Commercial Space Transportation Advisory
Committee (COMSTAC) have prepared
forecasts of global demand for commercial
space launch services for the period 2004
to 2013.

The 2004 Commercial Space Transportation
Forecasts report includes:

The COMSTAC 2004 Commercial Geosynchronous Orbit Launch Demand Model, which projects demand for commercial satellites that operate in geosynchronous orbit (GSO) and the resulting commercial launch demand to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO); and

The FAA’s 2004 Commercial Space Transportation Forecast for Non- Geosynchronous Orbits, which projects commercial launch demand for satellites to non-geosynchronous orbits (NGSO), such as low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, elliptical orbits, and external orbits beyond the Earth.

Together, the COMSTAC and FAA
forecasts project that an average of 23.4
commercial space launches worldwide will
occur annually from 2004 to 2013. The
combined forecasts are similar to last
year’s forecast of 23.7 launches per year
although still down from 26.8 in the 2002
forecast and 32 in the 2001 forecast.

In the GSO market, satellite demand is 211
satellites, or 21.1 satellites per year, a
decrease of nine percent compared to the
2003 forecast when there was an average of
23.3 satellites per year. However, the resulting
demand for launches per year overall did
not decrease proportionately with the number
of satellites available because the 2004
forecast identifies fewer dual-manifested
launches in the future compared to last
year’s forecast. An analysis of GSO mass
data in the report indicates that the shift to
heavier-class satellites may be slowing.

The NGSO market includes 106 satellites
in the market from 2004–2013, the first
significant forecast increase in the total
number of NGSO satellites since the 1998
forecast, mostly because of improved business
conditions for two telecommunications
companies. Despite a 32.5 percent
increase of the number of satellites, launch
demand overall is unchanged from last
year’s forecast of 51 total launches because
an increasing
number of NGSO satellites are multiplemanifested;
more satellites are riding on
one launch vehicle on an average basis.

COMSTAC and FAA project an average
annual demand for: