Satgen544 New Ways into Space by GM4IHJ (BID SGEN544) 1999-08-28 The past few years has seen a slow but steady increase in new space launchers and new launch techniques. Some have been modifications of redundant Inter Continental Ballistic missile rockets such as the modified SS18 ICBM booster which recently lifted Surrey Satellite Technologies Uosat 12 into orbit. But others have used completely new technology or reinstated old technology which had been abandonned. Perhaps the most important of these has been Orbital Sciences Pegasus winged rocket. Carried aloft and flown to a safe launch point by a Lockheed L-1011 Stargazer carrier aircraft. The winged rocket is released to fly free before its rocket engine is started to take it on up into orbit. A technique now firmly developed which allows considerable choice of launch site ie over the Atlantic or the Pacific , with safe delivery over an unoccupied ground/ocean track to any chosen orbital inclination, carrying small to medium sized payloads. In a different category. International Sea Launch is a Boeing led consortium which sails the rocket out to a suitable oceanic launch site . So that a completely clear launch track and maximum earth rotation assistance is available to launch large payloads to geostationary or other high altitude orbits. Such that in the case of the geostationary orbit the satellite can be easily located very near to its chosen operational location. Having already completed its first test launch, the control ship and separate launch platform are this month sailing to a point in the Pacific at 154 degs longitude in order to launch a Hughes DirecTV-1R satellite. Meanwhile recent revival of an older technique in abeyance since the Challenger disaster, because of the problem of carrying fuel filled units inside the Space Shuttle. Has seen the launch of the X Ray satellite Chandra using an Inertial Upper Stage ( IUS) booster. STS 93 took Chandra aloft to a circular 320km altitude orbit. It was then released from the Shuttle which moved clear before the IUS fired its first burn taking Chandra to a 320 X 64,000 km orbit. Then over next week or so several more IUS burns took Chandra up to its final 10,000 X 132,000 km orbit . From where it can start probing the X ray sky for much of each orbit, except during the brief periods when it dives down through the Van Allen Radiation Belts where the Low Intensity X rays it is trying to measure will be drowned out. In addition to these new or revised launchers a new possibility for launching amateur radio satellites has emerged with the welcom news that the Indian authorities have informed Indian Radio Amateurs that they are prepared to consider helping Indian amateur satellite launches. PS Globalstar the second contender in the Satellite Mobile Phone arena has announced that they will start services in September 99. . They have 32 of their 48 satellites in orbit and have activated 9 of the 31 ground stations they propose to incorporate in the network.