SAB Launch Services and ICEYE signed an agreement to fly two Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites on the first VEGA-C SSMS mission in 2023-01-01.
The first Vega C rideshare mission with the SSMS Dispenser was planned for early 2023 to host a large aggregate of smallsats and cubesats.
The SSMS Dispenser provides clients access to a diverse launch schedule with multiple launch opportunities within a year offering more orbits and different inclinations.
Arianespace first deployed the SSMS rideshare service in September 2020.
The SSMS rideshare service was developed with the support of the European space industry and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Arianespace performed the first SSMS launch using a Vega vehicle in September 2020, deploying more than 40 cubesats and seven smallsats into sun-synchronous orbit.
The Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) dispenser system is an ESA product developed by Italy’s Avio under ESA leadership and produced by SAB Aerospace s.r.o. of the Czech Republic.
Arianespace plans regular SSMS missions in the future with the next-generation Vega C, which is expected to launch in 2021.
ESA planned the smallsat Vega SSMS mission in 2017 for a 2018 launch but the manifest slipped to the second half of 2019 because not all customers were ready.
The SSMS Vega launch was scheduled for September but will likely be postponed because of the investigation into the 2019-07-10 Vega rocket failure.
Arianespace scheduled the SSMS Proof of Concept launch for summer 2019 and provided a specific launch date of 2019-09-05.
Avio has four Vega launches planned in 2019: the Italian Space Agency’s PRISMA satellite, the ESA-supported SSMS adaptor proof-of-concept flight, and the launches of the United Arab Emirates’ Falcon Eye 1 and Falcon Eye 2 satellites.
Avio hopes to perform one or two SSMS launches annually as part of Vega and, eventually, Vega C.
The European Space Agency has worked on the SSMS adapter since 2016 alongside Avio of Colleferro, Italy.
ISIS – Innovative Solutions In Space – has joined the group of customers that signed contracts to launch payloads on Vega’s Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) Proof Of Concept flight in early 2019.
The Small Spacecraft Mission System (SSMS) adapter was developed by the European Space Agency to accommodate 10 to 15 smallsats per launch.