SpaceX Launches Record 143 Satellites
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
SpaceX set a new world record on Sunday by launching 143 satellites into Earth orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
The Sunday morning polar orbit launch included 133 commercial and government spacecraft along with 10 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband communications constellation. The launch was conducted from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Payloads aboard the rocket included:
- 48 SuperDove Earth observation satellites for San Francisco-based Planet
- 36 spacecraft for Swarm Technologies of Palo Alto, Calif., doubling the company’s constellation and data transfer satellites
- 20 satellites and two instruments aboard D-Orbit’s ION SCV Laurentius satellite
- 10 Starlink global broadband satellites for SpaceX
- 8 Spire LEMUR-2 satellites that will provide ship tracking and other services
- 8 GEN1 communications spacecraft for Kepler Communications of Canada
- 5 Internet of Things (IoT) satellites for Astrocast of Switzerland
- 3 synthetic aperture radar satellites (SAR) for the Finnish company ICEYE
- 3 V-R3x technology demonstration satellites for NASA
- 3 radio frequency data satellites for HawkEye 360 of Virginia
- 2 SAR satellites for Capella Space of San Francisco
- GHGSat-C2 Hugo emissions monitoring satellite for GHGSat of Canada
- iQPS-2 SAR satellite for iQPS of Japan
- Hiber Four IoT satellite for Hiber of Amsterdam
- NanoAvionics-built radio frequency spectrum satellite for U.S.-based Aurora Insight
- NASA Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-1 satellite, whose thrusters are powered by water
- ashes of 104 individuals for the space burial company Celestis Inc.
Nanoracks completed its first rideshare mission, which it named Eyries-1. The company deployed eight LEMUR-2 satellites for Spire and the GHGSat-C2 Hugo emissions monitoring spacecraft for GHGSat.
“It was so exciting being part of the first completely dedicated smallsat rideshare mission launched by SpaceX, and we look forward to being a long-term provider of access to these types of flights,” said External Payloads Manager Tristan Prejean in a press release. “Now our customers can get the same level of customer service they know from our Space Station missions, but they have the flexibility to choose between the Space Station, the Northrop Grumman Cygnus, and SpaceX Rideshare launches. We’re a one-stop shop for any orbital destination.”
Italy-based D-Orbit’s ION Pulse mission will 20 satellites from its ION SCV Laurentius spacecraft, including eight SuperDove Earth observation satellites for Planet.
After completing the satellite deployments, Laurentius will conduct the in-orbit demonstration and validation of two commercial payloads:
- ARGO, a fully autonomous plug & play star tracker developed by EICAS Automazione.
- DRAGO – Demonstrator for Remote Analysis of Ground Observations, a short-wave infrared space camera for Earth observation developed by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC).
Exolaunch of Berlin, Germany, launched 30 spacecraft for U.S. and European customers that included NanoAvionics, Dresden Technical University, and the German Aerospace Center. Satellites will perform IoT, Earth observation and various scientific applications.
“Through our partnership with SpaceX, Exolaunch has become the bridge for multiple European smallsat developers and others from around the world interested to launch on Falcon 9,” said Exolaunch Vice President of Launch Services Jeanne Medvedeva said in a press release. “As the SpaceX’s SmallSat Rideshare Program takes off and expands, more organizations will have the opportunity to launch their satellites into orbit though our tailored, flight-proven, and cost-effective launch and deployment solutions.”
Spaceflight Inc. launched 16 payloads for customers, with 15 of them aboard the company’s next-generation Sherpa-FX1 orbital transfer vehicle.
SpaceX’s 10 Starlink satellites were the first to be launched into polar orbit. The company has now launched 1,025 Starlink spacecraft, with an estimated 951 in orbit.
Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The booster previously supported launch of Crew Dragon’s second demonstration mission, the ANASIS-II mission, a Starlink mission, and launch of Dragon’s 21st cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.
16 responses to “SpaceX Launches Record 143 Satellites”
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And Musk has confirmed these Starlinks have laser inter-satellite comms, so no need for polar ground stations. As this rolls out to the rest of the constellation…
SpaceX does have a Starlink ground station at Prudhoe Bay though, according to FCC filings. Not sure if it’s operational yet however.
The video down the Florida coast was amazing. Not to mention the landing right off the northern coast of Cuba.
There is lots of moaning on Twitter about the plague of satellites. I’m just sayin’. I realize that my feel for the zeitgeist may be distorted by the large number of astronomers on my feed, but the rumble is growing louder.
https://twitter.com/planet4…
https://twitter.com/ConanOB…
Oh, and apparently someone just reported on James Webb’s history of homophobia. Space Twitter is not happy about that. I was going to suggest renaming it the Wernher Von Braun Space Telescope. He was not a homophobe as best as I can tell. In fact, some of the best Nazis… anyway, I thought better of it and simply suggested canceling the project altogether. Not a popular choice, apparently.
Progress is not always win win win. Sometimes it’s win win lose, and others it’s win inconvenience lose, and still others……As I don’t have a handle on the actual damage to astronomers, my initial reaction is normally that tractors put a lot of farm horses out of business.
I do wonder how much real damage is inflicted on astronomers and on those that watch the night sky and how that relates to the gains of the new capabilities. Bearing in mind that my priors are that satellite watching is entertainment too, and that the pros can probably work with this as well as they do with other problems. Or jackhammers and dust are part of the price of a remodel.
Catching a satellite is indeed a bit of a thrill if you haven’t seen one in a while. However, the night sky filled with a grid of satellites flowing overhead will be paradise lost.
Given SpaceX’s efforts to reduce reflectivity and lower their operational orbits, it’s not so much Starlink that I’m concerned about, but rather the daunting number of competitors and other followers lining up to loft their own satellite networks
Many may be astronomers with true concerns, others may be trolls using this as an excuse to denigrate space launches in general. I say this because I’ve seen a significant uptick in ‘We should be doing ‘X’ with the money instead’ comment postings in places only the already-space-enthusiast would be coming to, anyway.
And note, you will even find such comments following new large *ground-based* telescope stories as well…
Yes. The “Party of Science” seems, in fact, to have very mixed emotions about both science and scientists.
Academics, as a class, are among the most obnoxiously entitled people on the planet. So are show people.
Indeed, education is pernicious and can lead to dancing. It is better that the people should remain ignorant that they might be more easily led… by the nose.
ignorant indeed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
SLS delenda est
Not knowing either of you personally, I can’t be sure which side, if either, I am on. Education is a critical need for any society to be successful. The problem as I see it is that education is not the same as schooling, and schooling is often hijacked by academia.
Schooling is a variation on the old question of “Is it twenty years of experience, or one year repeated twenty times?”. Much of official schooling seems to be conformity training rather than teaching people to learn.
Academia should be a valuable bastion of knowledge and teaching. Quite often recently it seems to be more of a religious type belief system in which questioning anything certain of them say is unacceptable.
I really wish I had some foolproof way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately, I am all too aware of my limitations. One of them being that the unintended consequences of any ruling or guideline can worsen the problem. Or, my good intentions would not be enough to ensure good outcomes.
The story of Bret Weinstein and of Evergreen College is a marker in just how rotten the American academic society has fallen. If you haven’t heard of that incident already, it is worth looking into you might be shocked.
Even though Bret is self-described “radical left” politically, he is a pretty fair and reasonable dude. I heartily recommend the podcast that he shares with his wife, called ‘The Darkhorse Podcast’.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
SLS delenda est
Education is always a good thing. Just don’t confuse it with schooling. As academics have largely abandoned anything much resembling education in favor of imparting “wokeness” to “students” who are both easily led and who exit as, or even more, ignorant as when they entered, I would, frankly, be pleased if more of them would dance instead of running around smashing windows and starting fires.
Does the SpaceX rideshare price by the kg of payload or by the number of payload berths?
Evenly divided among 133 payloads, that’s what? Less than half a million dollars per payload?
SLS delenda est
SpaceX’s minimum deal is for up to 200 kg to LEO for $1 million. Mass beyond 200 kg. is $5,000/kg. The broker/aggregators buy enough capacity to cover their clients, then parcel it out based on what the various sats weigh and what their own markup is. A sat owner with either fairly big birds or a lot of small ones is probably better off dealing directly with SpaceX. Folks with a small and lightweight sat, or only a few such, are better off dealing with an aggregator.