Alaska Aerospace Corporation Foresees Growing Commercial Market

Alaska Aerospace Corporation launch facility in Narrow Cape. (Photo courtesy of AAC)

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Alaska Aerospace Corporation is seeing continued success in the commercial market.

That’s according to CEO and President Craig Campbell, who will present to the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly at its regular meeting Thursday.

AAC has entered into a few different commercial contracts alongside a multi-year, multi-million dollar agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency.

Campbell says AAC has had 19 launches from Kodiak, two of which involved test missiles with MDA.

The commercial opportunities are growing, Campbell says. He sees Alaska as a popular launching ground in 2018 and 2019.

“Our location is polar and that’s where a lot of new imaging satellites need to get into is polar orbit but the attraction also is we’re not a federal range and we’re substantially lower cost than any other range in the United States that can provide this same type of service.”

Campbell says AAC has launch contracts with a liquid-fuel company called Astra, another with electron rocket company Rocket Lab, and another with Vector Space Systems.

He explains AAC may build on its land at Narrow Cape to help accommodate those launches.

“Some of the commercial operators actually would like to have their own designated launch pad, so they’re not really sharing with anybody else, and we have lots of land right down there by the current launches, so we could carve out 10 acres here and 10 acres there and let individual companies develop their own small pads, so you may see more development on site, but it’ll all be contained within the lease area we have.”

Campbell will speak more about AAC’s future commercial operations at the assembly meeting Thursday night. That’ll be at 6:30 p.m. in the assembly chambers.

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