Sweden and Poland pioneer fighter jets for space missions

Sweden aims to join the countries that can independently launch a payload into Earth's orbit. Instead of a cosmodrome, the Swedes plan to use their multi-purpose JAS-39 Gripen aircraft as a launch platform. Poland is also working on a similar solution.

How to send a payload into orbit? The most widespread solution involves large, heavy, and expensive carrier rockets requiring costly infrastructure. A significant amount of fuel is used in the initial phase of the flight, when the rocket lifts off from Earth and overcomes the lowest, densest layers of the atmosphere, generating the most significant resistance.

This problem can be partially solved by changing the altitude from which the rocket starts and using an airplane to take it into the air. Although the rocket's size and the mass of the payload it carries are limited, a regular airport and airplane are sufficient to start the space mission.

The Swedes want to realize this idea, having launched the Stella research program for this purpose. Its launch aligns with Sweden's new "Space Strategy in the Field of Defense and Security," adopted in early July, which aims to "secure Sweden's interests in defense and security in space."

This aligns with NATO's decision to treat outer space as the fifth operational domain, an area for conducting military operations. The other four are land, sea, air, and cyberspace.

The aim of the Stella program is to test the possibility of launching small payloads into orbit using a rocket launched from an aircraft. The Royal Institute of Technology KTH in Stockholm has already researched this solution. Researchers believe the idea is feasible for small, 4-pound payloads—not much, but enough to place nanosatellites into orbit.

The Swedish army is interested in the initiative. Colonel Ella Carlsson, head of the Space Department of the Swedish Air Force, stated that the inspiration came from an interview in which a former director of the Ukrainian Space Agency claimed that the ability to place satellites into orbit using an aircraft quickly would have been very desirable before the Russian aggression.

The Swedish military has significant reservations. The continuation of the Stella program is conditional on confirming that the rocket with the payload can launch from the JAS-39 Gripen aircraft. The main concern is verifying whether this will require modifications to the aircraft itself.

It is worth noting that the Swedes are not the first – similar research was started by the Italians in 2019, who want to use Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft as rocket carriers. Also worth mentioning is the interrupted American ALASA program.

DARPA's research program aimed to test the possibility of launching satellites into orbit with a rocket carried into the air by an F-15 aircraft. According to the program's assumptions, this was supposed to respond to the risk of space infrastructure being destroyed during a potential armed conflict.

Although the ALASA program was abandoned, the idea of rapidly carrying out space missions has not been dismissed.

Examples include missions during which – though using traditional Firefly Alpha carrier rockets – the Pentagon tested the ability to rapidly launch payloads into orbit within just a few dozen hours of making such a decision. During the Victus Nox mission in September 2023, the time from decision to launch was just 27 hours.

This pace allows for the rapid rebuilding of reconnaissance satellite constellations that have been damaged or intentionally destroyed in orbit due to enemy actions.

Flying launch platforms, as well as rockets with significantly larger mass, have also been utilized by the Northrop Grumman Pegasus system, in use since the 1990s. Developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, it uses Pegasus and Pegasus XL rockets up to 58 feet long and weighing up to 51,000 pounds.

The three-stage rocket can place a 976-pound payload into low orbit, with the launch carried out from an aircraft (e.g., B-52) that takes the rocket to an altitude of 43,000 feet. To date, 45 different missions have been carried out this way, with the last one taking place in 2021.

Virgin Orbit developed a similar solution, using a Boeing 747 aircraft as the launch platform and the LauncherOne rocket. In 2023, its solutions were taken over by Stratolaunch Systems, which operates another flying launch platform—the twin-fuselage, world's largest aircraft Stratolaunch.

In 2022, the Polish Space Agency signed a letter of intent with Virgin Orbit regarding launches from Polish territory using LauncherOne systems.

Poland is also researching using military aircraft as launch platforms for space rockets. The Department of Mechatronics, Armament, and Aviation of the Military University of Technology (WAT), in collaboration with the Łukasiewicz Research Network - Institute of Aviation, has verified, among other things, the possibility of using decommissioned MiG-29 and Su-22 aircraft.

Their use as launch platforms would make Poland – currently building relatively small satellites – independent of the availability of cargo space in rockets carrying larger payloads into orbit for other countries.

"The grand space programs conducted by the Americans, Russians, Chinese, or Europeans (...) are available only to countries that can afford them. Poles participate in them on a 'piggyback' basis, meaning our payload can be attached to the main payload, and its launch involves several years of waiting in line (…)." – explains Dr. Eng. Piotr Zalewski from WAT.

An essential issue in this case is the aircraft's lifting capacity and the availability of an adequately extensive aviation range. This is necessary for safety reasons – that’s why cosmodromes are built in sparsely populated areas (like Baikonur in Kazakhstan, ELS in French Guiana, Andoya in Norway, or Esrange in Sweden), or – as in the case of the U.S. – over the ocean, where a potential rocket disaster would not cause damage on the ground.

"It is realistic to place a rocket with a satellite, for example, under the wings or fuselage of an aircraft that will take off from an airport in Poland and fly over the North Sea, where the rocket will detach and complete its flight in a safe zone. We would not then be dependent on Americans or the European Agency, and we wouldn't have to wait in line to attach to a large payload," – notes Dr. Eng. Zalewski.

Research conducted in Poland confirmed that – after modification – the decommissioned aircraft could lift rockets weighing 4,000 to 9,000 pounds. "Considering the performance and capabilities of some fighter aircraft, a rocket with the required parameters can be carried by them. This means that a space payload weighing 22 pounds can be launched into so-called low Earth orbit (310 to 430 miles)" – the researchers concluded.