SpaceX launched 85 satellites for external customers, including three Starlink satellites, on Tuesday, marking the company’s second successful launch of its dedicated Riders mission. The Transporter-2 mission will deliver fewer objects in space than the first Rideshare mission (Transporter-1 sent 143 satellites, a new record), which has resulted in more mass journeys in orbit overall. Transporter launches are part of the company’s Rideshare business model. Announced in 2019, these missions have split the rocket’s payload capacity between multiple customers, resulting in lower costs for everyone – many of which small companies can spend associated with orbiting otherwise impossible to pay.
SpaceX is still fully launched and ends up earning money to manage it. The Falcon 9 rocket left Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time. This is the 20th Falcon 9 launch in 2021 and the first launch of the year to land on the beach instead of a drone ship at sea. The first stage booster parted at about 3:34 pm ET and returned to Cape Canaveral and landed successfully about eight minutes after the lift. This was its eighth aircraft.
The mission includes about 10 customers, including some launch service providers who are managing customer payloads themselves – such as Spaceflight Inc., which launches 3 small satellites for 14 customers, as well as Sherpa-LTE’s dubbed electric navigation vehicle. It also includes the launch of the first satellites for space agencies Umbra and Loft Orbital’s “Ridershare” satellites, Yam-2 and Yam-3, each equipped with five separate sensors for individual customers. Since SpaceX had its 20th launch this year (and still 127th mission), it’s pretty safe to assume that the company will surpass last year’s record of 26 launches.This was the second attempt to launch Transporter-2, originally scheduled for June 29. That SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded by calling the control system a breach. Unfortunately, the opening will be closed for today, when a plane enters the “Keep Out Zone”, which is an unreasonably huge ig. There is no easy way for humanity to become a spacing civilization without major regulatory reforms. The current regulatory system is broken.
