SpaceX launches three payloads
SpaceX yesterday successfully launched three different payloads on its third “Bandwagon” launch, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairings completed their second and fifteenth flights respectively.
The rocket’s primary payload was a commercial satellite for a South Korean company. Next was a commercial weather smallsat from the startup Tomorrow.
The third payload was from the European company Atmos, and was intended to test its deployable heat shield designed to protect payloads returning from orbit. According to the company, preliminary data says the deployment and return went as planned.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
46 SpaceX
20 China (with a launch scheduled for this morning)
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 46 to 35.
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SpaceX yesterday successfully launched three different payloads on its third “Bandwagon” launch, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairings completed their second and fifteenth flights respectively.
The rocket’s primary payload was a commercial satellite for a South Korean company. Next was a commercial weather smallsat from the startup Tomorrow.
The third payload was from the European company Atmos, and was intended to test its deployable heat shield designed to protect payloads returning from orbit. According to the company, preliminary data says the deployment and return went as planned.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
46 SpaceX
20 China (with a launch scheduled for this morning)
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 46 to 35.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s Vice President of Launch, notes that this launch smashed an important SpaceX record:
“Congrats to the @SpaceX Dragon team on the third Dragon launch in 38 days!!! This smashes the previous record of three launches in 56 days last year. It’s not daily human flights, but at least we’re headed the right direction 😜🚀”
https://x.com/TurkeyBeaver/status/1914326450150269322
(Great photo of the Fram2 Dragon splashdown attached to that.)
SpaceX just keeps amazing us.
The Space Review had a multi-part article on EELVs–the latest a history of ride-share adapter.
Not much on the rockets themselves
”The rocket’s primary payload was a commercial satellite for a South Korean company.”
It was a military reconnaissance satellite for the Korean military.
Robert Zimmerman,
The primary payload wasn’t commercial, it was a classified satellite for the South Korean military. That’s why the launch webcast featured no video of the fairing separation or the payload deployments – just as on all those NROL missions SpaceX flies.
Richard M,
That record-breaking Dragon launch was F9’s previous launch, not this one. They come so quickly anymore that I know it’s hard to keep track. Five more scheduled in the next 7 days. If SpaceX manages that, it will make 15 for April, 51 for the YTD and an annualized rate of 153 – almost back to the annualized rate of 156 it had going in January when there were 13 launches. If SpaceX can maintain, or even modestly improve, its recent pace for the rest of the year, it could finish with a total in the lower 170s. We’ll see.
Jeff Wright,
It’s impressive that anyone can get three articles out of the development of a standard payload adapter, but I’m not getting any younger and I just couldn’t see spending the time needed to read those. Much better to come here and comment – though I also do so over at The Space Review when the subject interests me sufficiently.
Hi Dick,
Belatedly, I realized that I put that comment on the wrong thread! Mea culpa.
Richard M,
Easy enough to do. And SpaceX is just going to keep making it easier and easier.
There is one baptism of fire SpaceX perhaps hasn’t endured—the lightning strike:
R-7, perhaps the most rugged LV extant
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jQVsI7erv8&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fup-ship.com%2F
Falcon itself came close:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixk6berYZUM
SLS facility too
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nasa-moon-rocket-track-lightning.html
Saturn V still the champ
https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap12fj/a12-lightningstrike.html
Has any Falcon been directly hit?