The Pegasus Air-Launched Space Booster is an innovative new space launch vehicle now in full scale development and initial production. Pegasus, developed by a privately-funded joint venture of Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and Hercules Aerospace Company, is a three-stage, solid-propellant, inertially-guided, winged vehicle that is launched from a carrier aircraft at 40,000 ft and Mach .8. This 50 ft long, 41,000 Ib vehicle can deliver a payload of 900 Ib into a low inclination, 150 nmi Earth orbit. The first two Pegasus flights are sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with additional missions currently reserved by the U.S. Air Force and commercial customers.
Pegasus was conceived to provide a more flexible and more efficient launch system for small space payloads by taking advantage of the many benefits inherent in the airborne launch approach. The Pegasus system achieves a substantial improvement in payload performance relative to comparable ground-based launch vehicle designs, while also providing numerous advantages in operational flexibility and cost effectiveness.
The flight vehicle, shown in Figure 1, consists of three solid-propellant rocket motors, a fixed highmounted composite delta wing, an aft skirt assembly including three composite fins, an avionics section atop the third stage, and a two-piece composite payload fairing
