SpaceX’s Transporter-3 Launch Places 105 Satellites into Orbit
CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, Fla. (SpaceX PR) — On Thursday, January 13 at 10:25 a.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched Transporter-3, SpaceX’s third dedicated SmallSat Rideshare Program mission, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. On board this launch were 105 commercial and government spacecraft (including CubeSats, microsats, PocketQubes, and orbital transfer vehicles).
This was the tenth launch and landing of this Falcon 9 stage booster, which previously supported launch of Crew Demo-2, ANASIS-II, CRS-21, Transporter-1, and five Starlink missions. Following stage separation, SpaceX landed Falcon 9’s first stage on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
40 responses to “SpaceX’s Transporter-3 Launch Places 105 Satellites into Orbit”
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Congratulations! Another successful flight for SpaceX!
Three more scheduled during the remainder of this month and then straight into Feb. with a sixth launch currently scheduled for the 2nd and the first Axiom mission to ISS as the other Feb. bookend.
Falcon 9 showing how it’s done. Looking forward to the Heavy flights coming up. I’m starting to see the effects of the Falcon program in proposed flights. BIG things are coming.
oh good me? I grow constantly more and more tired of the hype. the Musketerrs make this just unbearable.
I’ve been hearing about the new batch of proposals from the astro/planetary sci community. They get it now. The new batch of goodies are far more ambitious than the older batch. It’s going to get pretty cool really soon.
I read the paper that the astro/planetary boffins put together about the possibilities for outer planet and other astro/planetary science missions that could be enabled by Starship. Is it that to which you refer?
No, however that was an interesting paper. These proposals are not that ambitious but are more along the lines of what we’ve been chatting about on this forum over the past few years. I think once Starship becomes operational it will be another two years or so at least (Probably more) before the machinery can react. It seems to have taken about 5 years to finally react to Falcon.
About 5-7 years from now for reaction to Starship to really start ramping up? Your 5 years for Falcon reaction, 2-4 years for Starship operations to settle down to some cadence, and then 2-3 years for the users to get going with it?
The reaction lag makes good sense as one wouldn’t want to invest in yet more warehouse ornaments if the capability fades. From a business/entrepreneur/experimenter aspect when people are using their own money.anyway.
Yes, but I’d propose that the catching up that the public and private sectors are doing with Falcon now, might be running in parallel with Starship. Now that the payload designers have it in mind to go big and be more ambitious, that operational culture will be primed and going once Starship starts to fly. I expect we’ll see some payloads just get shunted over from one vehicle to another once the system is ready and customers are willing.
So that could shorten the timeline I suggested by a bit. Or extend if SS teething problems take longer. I hadn’t thought in terms of SS hitting the ground running with a customer base.
Astronomy/Planetary Science is still largely a government-funded thing and the projects, still being bespoke and expensive, are targeted for launch on vehicles of demonstrated capability. It’s not an unreasonable attitude to take. Even government-sponsored launcher projects don’t always work out anent science missions. The case of Europa Clipper and SLS comes to mind. The Falcons are mature, reliable and already have a few manifested deep space probe payloads lined up for launch starting later this year. That there will be more, especially for Falcon Heavy, is good news. Lower launch prices will stretch the research program budgets further as well – never a bad thing.
I think that’s a great rundown of what’s going on in the government sector. Space X’s rapid fire flight cadence forces the issue with even the most stodgy institutions.
Good to know in any event. Also good that JWST didn’t suck all of space-based science in past its event horizon. I look forward to future announcements.
Yes, demand often takes a while to catch up with a change in supply for a long lead item like satellite launch.
Yup, and we’ve seen that too in small launch as well.
LOL “they get it now” WHY? THE vehicle has not flown there is no real hint of what it will carry, how frequently it will launch, how much it will cost to launch…there is the same exact hype around Starship that was around the shuttle. the interplanetary people were planning all sorts of missions, the SSME was going to do this and that. Just like Raptor
It is very likely that none of these expectations will prove any where near to reality. they will likely be better then the FH (or not) but so far all we have are endless Musk hypes on almost no performance. not a single piece of his startship hardware has even made it into space.
this is however not the hype I am talking about. its the endless “Oh Musk is so smart” Hype that has just become a cacophony
Musk is pretty smart.
Yes. And except in a few noteworthy quarters, that is about as controversial a notion as that the sun will rise tomorrow in the East.
If you are at McMurdo, it rises in the north.
Ya got me!
It seems Andrew was referring to projects that contemplate launch on the Falcons. Science projects aimed at launch on Starship will, as he also notes, await the actual entry of that vehicle into service.
I can imagine it would get a tad wearing being wrong so much of the time.
I think it is not so much technically wrong as an attack on a particular world view. Much like your reaction to Democrats and (your definition of) leftists. Or my reaction to authoritarians or communists. When one tries to shoehorn everything into a particular ideology, the outliers can get quite annoying.
How would you like to be linked to Boeing right now?
I guess that is a so called subtle jab at me
Its quite obvious that I am a Boeing employee…and I am darn proud of it. I am not related to spaceflight (and chose not to be) but it was an honor to be asked to join the company and essentially leap frog quite a few levels of company status and come into it again where I am. No matter if its flight ops or office work I leave every day with a sense of pride in what my team, the company and I are doing.
I dont advertise what I do in respect to company policy.
as for a world view. Mine is more or less based on reality. Not musk talking with “everyday astronaut” and talking about fantasy pipedreams of cities on Mars with no economic system for them to function in
fly safe
Your worldview seems less based in “reality” than in a conviction that the future will be more or less like the past and present with only modest tweaks applied – except for all the recent Woke totalitarianism, of course, of which you seem to generally approve.
oh how silly a triumph of trumpism silliness
the future is constant change and the next say 20 years will be no different because most of life is dynamic. the big question is in 20 years will the US be a super power or a decaying fascist state lead by trumpers. I doubt it but its remotely possible. we came close to it on 6 Jan
there are several constants. the love of my children, the love of my wife, my love of the country and my family and yes my job. I am guessing in 20 at 75 I’ll finally be ready for retirement…although my first mentor at Boeing flew to 80 so who knows
what will however remain constant is the future of humans in space UNTIL and when we find something that makes it economically viable. Until then it will be like it has been for the last 60 years. Fan boys hoping for change and none happening. and no Musk wont be on Mars. no one will be on mars. the angry astronaut will still be angry Musk fans will either have ditched him or still be taking excuses, trump fans will still be shouting MAGA and well nothing will have changed…unless the fascist trump folks win.
I dont think that they will. just to dumb
The U.S. is already a decaying fascist state under the Biden Putsch. The currency is inflating. The schools are, at every level, becoming purely instruments of indoctrination rather than education at warp speed. The FBI, long since weaponized against the Putsch’s political opponents, is being converted to a full-on Stasi with the military next. The Jan. 6 “insurrection” was the FBI’s attempted version of a Reichstag Fire but the matches weren’t sufficiently dry. The tech oligarchic enablers of the Putsch are censoring opposing voices. The only thing lacking in today’s Weimar U.S. is a Non-Aggression Pact with the PRC. One suspects that isn’t far off.
The only way the U.S. remains a superpower in 20 years is if we “Trump folks” win. That looked like a steeply uphill fight a year ago. Fortunately, the crude idiocies of the Biden Putsch are serving to bulldoze the grade not only flat, but now to a downhill slope as well.
Congratulations on your new job (I might be late to that, don’t know)
thank you. I was happy at Turkish and loved the job but the situation in the country is “less”. I was looking for a jump but this came straight out of the blue. I was a triple driver but helping in Max recert as it had been my baby before leaving…and now I am back. a few grades higher, mostly management but some fly ing (this is an age thing) and well happy as a frog sunning on the log 🙂 you are very kind thank you
There are certainly worldview considerations at issue. Those are inevitable when one’s worldview diverges so sharply from actual reality. Not all worldviews are created equal. The degree to which a given worldview is “annoyed by outliers” – i.e., inconvenient reality – is an index of how useful it is, or isn’t, in explaining/navigating real life.
As for Boeing, it’s hard to see any reason other than pure nostalgia for its now-long-fled greatness for voluntarily associating oneself with it in its current badly-decayed condition.
Greatness in the past likely has enough inertia to keep granting sizable paychecks for sometime to come. Don’t underestimate that attraction even in the absence of serious belief in the company.
The problem with a worldview in opposition to reality coupled with a desire for control is that bad solutions become forced on others. Let Musk do it all is just a variation on let the government do it all. Top down only works in certain narrow fields with clear objectives, and sometimes not even then. Bottom up, sometimes interpreted as anarchy, also only works sometimes in very limited situations.
The blend with ebb and flow requires a lot of work and intensive integrity. Intensive integrity is seriously hampered when an agenda directs your reactions. Some of your stuff is hard to digest, more of RGOs is indigestible, But yet, I have no problem with a few people here that i have serious disagreements with. Or integrity in opposition to me is preferable to a shortage of it in agreement with me. I can reason solutions if need be with someone that has it almost no matter how far apart we are.
Denial is a big part of the problem as well in preventing solutions. In many areas, 99% right is fatal. Driving, flying, bungee jumping, and spaceflight all require a much higher level of attention to accuracy that seen here in many cases.
Reality is often unpleasant to digest. That doesn’t make it safe to ignore the taste. When you’re being fed something brown it isn’t always chocolate.
Reality unpleasant?? Trumps behavior after the election renders him unfit for public office. I dislike the options available in the last several elections and it is now decades since having someone I respect in the oval office. Wouldn’t justify me trying to unilaterally change things.
What behavior did you have in mind? Trying to reverse the blatantly obvious theft of a Presidential election? Trump was certainly no typical Republican – they’ve been carefully trained to smile as the Dems put the dry corncobs up their behinds.
Trying to reverse it by stirring up as many people as possible is an appeal towards mob rule. Incessantly public harping on stop the steal hurt his own credibility. Reverse by legal means is a totally different animal than reversal by rhetoric. I don’t care to try mob rule as it almost never works out well.
I don’t care for Biden-Harris and meet very few that do, Trump is obviously not the answer, especially under a cloud.
there is not a significant thing about Musk or his space program I have been wrong agout. Mostly all his claims are “aspirational” in terms of the massive changes he was going to bring
I would argue that 105 satellites launched on a single reused rocket might qualify as a massive change from just a few years ago.
it is a massive change but I am unsure what overall value it has. maybe one will make a big dent in the industry they sure are good for my monitoring station…and enjoyment of ham radio
LOL. Perhaps, once mandatorily retired from piloting, you might essay a second career as a “news” reader on one of the Woke networks – if any remain in business by that time.
Falcon or Starship?