SpaceX’s Transporter-1 mission was the first in the new rideshare program that SpaceX announced in 2019. The company said at the time that it would dedicate “regularly scheduled” launches of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket to transporting large numbers of small satellites, or “smallsats.” “instead of focusing on one big, primary charge.
Usually smallsats reach orbit by tagging along with larger, more expensive satellites, and the waiting list can be long and unpredictable. But there has been a great momentum in the launch industry to tap directly into the booming smallsat market. Dozens of new rocket manufacturers promise to build scaled-down rockets that can provide quick and easy launches to smallsats. Two such companies, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit, have successfully launched their slimmed-down rockets into orbit and started commercial operations.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets are much larger than the Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit rockets, and they are typically used to launch hefty communications or spy satellites or Dragon spacecraft that carry astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station.
Deciding to dedicate additional missions to launching batches of smallsats is a business first, and it is a sign of how much interest in the industry has grown.
However, as the number of devices in orbit grows, experts are increasingly concerned about congestion. Satellites have collided in orbit before, and while such incidents don’t really pose a threat to people on the ground, the debris from the crash could stay in orbit for years or decades.