Falcon 9 Orbits Iridium-NEXT, GRACE-FO Satellites
The NASA/German Research Centre for Geosciences GRACE Follow-On spacecraft launch onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Tuesday, May 22, 2018, from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Tuesday afternoon and successfully orbited seven satellites.
There were five Iridium-NEXT communications satellites aboard. These were the 51st through 56th Iridium-NEXT spacecraft orbited by Falcon 9 boosters.
A pair of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites were also onboard. The spacecraft will measure changes in how mass is redistributed within and among Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and ice sheets, as well as within Earth itself.
The mission is a join collaboration of NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). GFZ reports receiving signals from both GRACE-FO satellites.
59 responses to “Falcon 9 Orbits Iridium-NEXT, GRACE-FO Satellites”
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Cool.
I love see SX launch, esp as they are now building up production.
BUT, I have to say that having one company monopolize this is NOT good.
We need BO to get moving. I would like to see them start launching ppl sub-orbital.
Even VG needs to get moving on this.
Richard Who?
Don’t worry, others firms will emerge, it’s how markets work as opposed to government agencies 🙂
No very likely. Do not see SpaceX losing any market share for a long time, if ever.
The entry cost to completed with SpaceX is extremely high. To the point of even Jeff Bezos could only get payloads mostly from SpaceX’s LEO constellation competitors.
Once the BFR enters service. It will carve out more market share from SpaceX’s competitors.
Except that Jeff Bezos will be his own market because his goal is building factories in space. Think more of someone who found a huge ore deposit and is trying to build a mining railroad to it. By contrast Elon Musk is building a common carrier railroad. Whereas NASA is just trying to build a bigger Oxcart 🙂
Bezos does not need to be his own space transport company if it is cheaper and faster to used SpaceX to deploy his space factories. It depends on how soon the follow-on launcher after the New Glenn will enter service. Since the New Glenn is more of a competitor to the Falcon Heavy than the BFR.
Yeah, but even NASA and other sat companies realize that multiple companies are needed. They have supported company/gov launchers to keep competition.
And once starlink is operational, woof. Look out prices for sat production. No doubt, that will drop the price of comm sat to a fraction of today.
As to BO, while he wants factories in leo, I’m guessing that he will focus on the moon initially.it will be where money is.
There’s plenty of market for being a secondary to SpaceX, if you are priced appropriately as a secondary, sat operators like multiple options for launch, its hard to make a business case if the launch cost to make it is reliant on a single LSP, sure Iridium is doing it, but F9 was second choice to Dpenr
The Moon being the only close-by source of extraterrestrial raw materials, methinks you are right.
Time wise its closest but energetically, there are closer sources
Which brings the trades back to launch cost in regards to vehicle costs with reuse or expendable factored in. If you are getting one use out of a vehicle and the launch cost of propellant is a major item, then the NEOs that you refer to are a a very good bet. If the vehicle can make multiple trips from LEO to destination and back with propellant being a minor item, then the moon is a better bet.
There are many variables in the choices. What is being sought and where is the best source. Pure industrial grade ore from an asteroid is likely a better mining option than parts per million on the moon. If concentrations are similar, then transportation costs become more important. Then trades shift more toward toward a high reuse architecture.
IMO, the design of the industry needs to be done the same way a building is structurally designed. Start with the roof live and dead loads. Add that mass to the top story structural loads and keep going adding all loads from each floor until reaching the foundation which is then designed to transfer everything above to bear on the ground. The foundation is designed last.
The space industry needs to start with who wants what that they are willing to pay for. Then locate that what taking into account concentrations, distance in time and energy, industry state of the art for those types of extraction, and cost of the various approaches to delivering that what to the customer. Neglecting the time value of money is not an option for the commercial side. Then the destination and type of craft can be chosen.
Energetically even Mars is closer… Not by much but enough
True. So the type of available transportation becomes the driver. If IMLEO remains the controlling factor Mars is a more viable destination, especially with one use and done craft. I believe that the moon will become higher priority as in-space reuse evolves, and propellant FOB LEO become less expensive. Unless I get a chance to put skin in the game, I have a wait and see attitude.
of course Mars has better fuel potential, argon, methalox and hydrolox and good quantities,as opposed to maybe drops of hydrolox from the moon
I have no doubt Blue Origin will eventually be successful. Given the net worth of Jeff Bezos, he can keep selling $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to keep Blue Origin funded pretty much forever. They’re definitely quite slow though. Zero orbital launches to date. SpaceX made it to orbit with Falcon 1, which turned out to be more of a proof of concept than anything else. But it did work.
The rate of SpaceX launches so far this year indicates 24 successful launches are possible by December 31, including a MaxQ abort flight (possibly a 3’rd reuse of Falcon 9).
29 total on manifest for this year
Yes, hitting the pace!
Apparently Gwen Shotwell is expecting 24-28, and as few as 18 next year as they burn through the manifest.
Yes they will be waiting on the payloads next year
That last clause is something to watch the next 2 year – what if SpaceX launches “all the satellites”?
Good question. Presumably they will be busy launching Starlink satellites for quite a long time once that begins.
Also, it will be interesting to see if prices drop, then if the market starts to respond with more payloads.
Right now the lower prices we are seeing are just inducing existing birds to fly on SpaceX and pocket the difference. If lower prices induced market entry, we’d need to see contracts being placed for those launches TODAY, we’re not seeing that yet.
I realize it’s not a popular opinion, but I don’t think this is gonna work out. For anyone. The GEO guys are waiting and watching the LEO guys. Even if a constellation does launch, I don’t see the market being there. Then either the LEO constellation will fail or they try to enter the wholesale backhaul market and drop GEO rates even further. Then everyone’s a zombie, just enough money to stay alive but not enough to make a profit.
The satellite launch industry is <0.1% of the potential launch market – the future is human spaceflight and in-space manufacturing. This space faring future is predicated on low launch costs. The combination of eating up (all) the existing launch market, together with Starlink, provides SpaceX with all funds they need to build BFR, and that gets us somewhere close to $50 per kg ($20-30 per lb.) to LEO.
GEO telecomms is a barely warm corpse. Within the next 10-30 years, “broadcast” television will die, to be replaced by on demand streaming over IP – delivered by a combination of terrestrial fibre and LEO constellation. Also in 30 years, 90+% of new automobiles won’t have steering wheels.
Well GEOs have their uses mainly in small countries, high throughput and sensor applications, if on orbit servicing pans out, they will have an appeal in being updatable. Not sure if steering wheels will really go away, there is the fun and other appeals to being able to control the vehicle, the cars will however be able to take control to prevent collisions.
There are of course non conventional uses for GEO if it gets cleared up enough, for space based solar but all these things take time
Small countries, large countries, all countries will be served by the same LEO constellations – the internet is a global network. The era of GEO satellites pointed at a small area of the globe is redundant with a low latency internet connection available to the entire world.
30,000+ people killed every year on US roads – fun is not a factor!!. That’s not to say that there won’t be some initial resistance, but getting the ape out of the loop will be a good thing for all apes.
Space based solar is too ridiculous for words for too many reasons – ask Musk what he thinks.
There will be a market for dedicated sat links and for small countries there is a pride element.
As for driving as I said the vehicles will be able to override human control for safety but there’s also off roading and infrastructure damage situations to consider
“There will be a market for dedicated sat links”
says who? and why?
“…and for small countries there is a pride element.”
What country cares about having a dedicated TV signal satellite that they don’t need – TV will be streamed over IP at the consumers convenience, not broadcast at the convenience of the TV company. High bandwidth, low latency satellite links could also potentially be a component of 5G (or beyond) cell phone networks. A low latency network could also be useful for autonomous vehicles.
Small and developing countries, and indeed all countries, will recognise and appreciate the opportunity to avoid costly ground based infrastructure.
My comment about cars without steering wheels, was not really a talking point about steering wheels, it was an attempt to make the point that the way things have been done in the past, or are done now, is not necessarily an indication of how they will be done in the future. The way we use space now is fundamentally limited by the reliability, size and cost of launch.
Michael Halpern has a point. SpaceX recently launched a communications satellite for Bangladesh. Until prices of satellite terminals come down (a lot) there will still be a market for broadcast satellite TV in developing countries.
When I visited India last year, there were satellite dishes all over the slums. We’re talking the slums that are nothing more than makeshift shacks with illegal connections to the power grid. And they had satellite TV dishes.
Plus IIRC intial target price of Starlink terminals is on the order of $100-$300 while that is cheap here, in developing countries, that’s just in reach of small businesses, if they are doing well.
If what Jeff2Space said is true, it would seem that VSAT dishes – which cost the same or more – are already within the means of a lot of slumdog non-millionaires.
And once Starlink and the other LEO constellations are up, those same slumdogs will have flat panel phased-array antennas.
Eventually sure but they will be more expensive to build at least initially
Not saying that broadcast TV will die overnight – it will certainly persist for a while, and more in some markets than others. However, when enough of a market base is served by sufficiently high bandwidth internet (fibre and/or 5G and/or LEO) then a stream only model becomes viable. Our changing cultural habits and a generational familiarity with internet content delivery will also be an increasingly influential factor.
Look at a significant portion of the GEOs F9 has lofted, having a satellite is considered a point of national pride for small countries.
I don’t doubt GEO will be more niche but it has its uses
Yes. For example SBSP will be used for powering factories in space. GEO is a good location that allows easy delivery of resources from asteroids along with delivery of goods to the Earth’s surface. The power beaming won’t be to Earth, but to nearby facilities in the associated industrial park in orbit.
space based solar is collectors in space then re-beamed and re-collected on Earth, as opposed to LEO factories/stations using “in space” solar.
Entirely agree that driving motor vehicles has not proven to be among humanity’s core competencies.
Earth-facing space-based solar won’t make sense for quite awhile. For the Moon, Mars and other places in space, though, it’ll be a very different story.
Agreed, but that’s “in space” solar rather than “space based” solar.
All of that is true. But as you say, some of that will occur in 10-30+ years. But SpaceX has to meet payroll next year, and the year after that. If 99.9% of the potential market takes 10 years, 20 years or even 50 years to develop… that’s a problem for SpaceX.
No, it’s a problem for all the other launch providers that can’t compete on price. Starlink will bring in more revenue than launch services even with limited deployment. SpaceX only really have to survive long enough to develop and establish BFR.
Except a lot has been developing for 10+ years under the promises of Shuttle initially, but the development has since picked back up
Actually, I suspect that musk is about to make some major inroads on the sat industry as well. He has always been about manufacturing. Right now , SATs are hand-made. But I have no doubt that starlink will be on a line. But, he will almost certainly make it very inexpensive, fast, and easy to create different SATs using their bus architecture. All that will be plug’n’play into the sat. And launch will then happen in the next week or so after the building of the sat.
You’re right, it’s not a popular opinion. Starlink will be successful if they can provide speeds and pricing similar to terrestrial broadband service. There are remote areas that do not have broadband, by today’s definition. There are also areas in the US where broadband providers don’t care about how terrible their service is because they are effectively a monopoly. And even in areas with multiple providers (like where I am), the providers still price their services like they’re a monopoly and provide terrible customer service.
Starlink will be a resounding success if it’s priced competitively and provides speed and reliability comparable to existing terrestrial based broadband. So many people are fed up with their current providers that they’ll switch. This includes every single “cord cutter” like me (I currently use Sony PS Vue for “television” and “cloud dvr” service). I don’t want my TV or my phone bundled with my broadband service (I have not had a “land line” for over a decade and don’t miss it one bit). In fact, I have to call my provider today to cancel the “voice” service I never used that I got in a bundle because it was cheaper, for the introductory year, than just getting broadband service by itself. Ugh. I’m so sick of the games I have to play just to get a decent price on my service.
One business model for a system like Starlink would be simply to bundle access with the device. Pay $50 for a smart phone and it’s connected to Starlink as long as it works.
Of course nations that like to control what their citizens get will do their best to jam the signals 🙂
Starlink isn’t a satellite phone system. As far as I know it requires a fairly large antenna (it’s been described as the size of a pizza box, but who knows how big of a pizza?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Then he will probably offer it cheap enough everyone will have one at home or at their business. It will probably be built into Tesla vehicles and easy to retrofit on others as your own private hotspot for all your devices.
Me too. And there are tens of millions of us. Starlink can’t happen soon enough to suit me.
GEOs are becoming less significant, the problem with them is high latency and small coverage area, with a LEO constellation, while it takes more satellites to get operational, (you can address this by mass production of satellites) you get fiber like speed around most of the world, simultaneously. All you need is the low cost flat panel antennas to connect into it, which might share manufacturing resources with the satellites to further reduce costs. It costs a lot to run and maintain fiber over a region, even when you don’t factor in regulations and licensing, or monopoly, LEOs once sufficiently deployed for operation can reach most of the planet, and when fully deployed, potentially all of it with sky access.
The Sirius radio app in my car uses a small antenna. True! I don’t get streaming video, but Dick Tracy type (satellite) video links and wrist-worn, or eyeglass type online video hardware is coming fast.
completely different type of antenna, you do need a bit more complicated of an antenna for starlink.
They still will have quite the backlog, its just that the payloads wont be ready
One word: Starlink.
Up to 29 would be nice, but weather, technical issues, and even scheduling conflicts happen.
thats why I said on manifest, Shotwell expects 24-28
Congratulations once again!
Nice example of a combo flight. Should have been savings for all involved.
Don’t see the Europeans, the Chinese, the Indians or the Russians along with Boeing and ULA catching up with what SpaceX have right now for at least 6 years. They all bet on new expendable launchers and SpaceX reusability failure.
So the entry cost to completed with SpaceX is scraping hardware just about to come online and developing new reusable hardware along with new production lines and new launch infra-structure. Also no one other than SpaceX have recovered and reused a rocket core.
Money is not the main obstacle to completing with SpaceX. It is time needed to catch up to SpaceX. While SpaceX is is doing another technology leap in the meantime.
In theory Blue Origin might be able to complete with SpaceX. But they have no orbital launcher currently and the New Glenn will enter service no earlier than 2021. Which is roughly when the BFR system is suppose to be flight tested.
“Compete,” not “Complete.”