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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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?