Launch Vehicle Classification for Decision-Making of Small Satellite Launch Options

In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the small satellite launch market. With the rapid development of novel launchers, for small satellite owners and operators, how to e ff ectively and e ffi ciently choose appropriate launch vehicles has become a major concern. Based on updated launch records, a reliable launch data source for multi-attribute evaluation and reclassi fi cation is established. Using a statistical classi fi cation process, active launch vehicles are classi fi ed into fi ve representative-in-class launchers on the basis of their capabilities and performance. Unlike the previous categorisation based on payload ability, this method captures launch cost, technology maturity, reliability and availability of each category within the current launch vehicles in service. Moreover, representatives are selected as the baseline types for the high-level planning and designing of complex small satellite launch missions. The analysis indicates that this study provides a valid statistical classi fi cation and selection strategy of representative-in-class launch vehicles to support decision-making for rapid assessment on a large number of small satellite launch missions.