DUBLIN — Although Tesla has had a mixed year, Elon Musk can take solace in the fact that SpaceX’s year has been undeniably good. The company sent a car into space and started testing its promising “space internet” concept. Now, it has hit another important milestone, launching its 19th rocket for the year, beating its previous record of 18 launches in twelve months. Among Musk’s many business ideas, SpaceX is perhaps the most interesting. The company’s reusable rocket technology has the potential to make space travel far more accessible and to lower the cost of putting things into orbit by a large margin. The rapid growth of the company underscores its promise. – Felicity Duncan
SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
By Andy Pasztor
A successful rocket launch Monday by Elon Musk’s SpaceX marked twin milestones for the company’s drive to ease access for commercial satellites into orbit.
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It was the 19th launch this year for the closely held company, formally called Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Its previous record was 18 missions last year, and the company projects several more launches by the end of the year.
Aerospace industry officials said the Falcon 9 rocket carried the largest number of satellites ever stacked on top a U.S. booster: a cluster of more than five dozen small satellites that were launched into space from central California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Such multiple-satellite missions are aimed at helping SpaceX compete against a bevy of much smaller, less costly rockets currently under development or starting to provide rides for this burgeoning market segment.
The lower part of the Falcon 9 launched Monday had flown on two previous missions, another first for the Hawthorne, Calif., company that has become synonymous with reusable rockets.
The launch occurred at 10:34 a.m. local time and the second stage separated successfully.
By slashing launch costs for individual customers and repeatedly recycling the main engines and the rest of the lower stage, Mr. Musk and his team seek to make it significantly easier for entrepreneurs, space startups, academic researchers and student groups to get spacecraft beyond Earth’s atmosphere. In this case, the stage flew for the third time in roughly seven months, reflecting SpaceX’s growing expertise and confidence in reusing such hardware.
Since global demand for launching larger satellites into higher orbits is stagnant and likely to shrink over the next two or three years, competition for the lower end of the satellite market is bound to intensify.
But SpaceX has other reasons for reusing hardware that already has flown in space. Over the years, SpaceX officials have maintained that enhanced rocket reusability—conceived with the goal of eventually paving the way for flights several times a week or even several times a day—is the best way to ensure overall mission reliability.
The more often launch crews execute their intricate sequence of engineering checks and commands, according to this concept, the more likely they are to get rockets off the ground safely and on schedule.
Hours after launch, SpaceX and a separate satellite-launch broker that helped with the arrangements said the payload deployed as planned.
Such small satellites typically hitch a ride as a secondary payload on a rocket dedicated to lifting a larger spacecraft, which means schedules often are at the mercy of the main customer.
But in recent years, satellite operators ranging from the Air Force to telecommunications companies to startup Earth-imaging ventures have stressed the benefits of prioritizing mini-payloads on certain launches. Dozens of different entities built the small satellites, from the Air Force to various space startups.
The 64 satellites come from 17 different countries and are sponsored by space agencies, companies, art museums and even a U.S. middle school.
Spaceflight, a Seattle-based launch broker that arranged for the unusual manifest of satellites, has said such missions enable “all kinds of business plans to come to fruition.”
The rocket’s lower stage returned and landed vertically on a specially outfitted floating platform less than nine minutes after launch.
Reflecting SpaceX’s accelerating launch tempo, the company on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a cargo resupply capsule for NASA to the international space station. That mission also will use a Falcon 9 rocket, but it is slated to lift off from Florida.
Write to Andy Pasztor at [email protected]
