It was on Sunday (January 24, 2021) when SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket left the earth’s atmosphere setting a new space record. It has been claimed that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried a very high number of satellites into orbit. According to the reports, the rocket was carrying a total of 143 satellites on its mission when entering orbit.
This is the record-highest number of satellites carried by a single rocket in a single run into space. The mission for the rocket carrying 143 satellites was named “Transporter-1”. It has been confirmed that the rocket carried 10 satellites for Starlink, which is the internet network for SpaceX.
The other 133 satellites belonged to numerous customers who were eager to have their satellite in the orbit as well. One of the two major customers was ICEYE, which is known for developing small radar satellites used for tacking floods and monitoring ice. The other major customer was Planet, which is known for the constellation of satellites used for Earth-imaging.
By successfully carrying out the Transporter-1 mission, SpaceX has managed to break all previous records of carrying the highest number of satellites. The previous record was set by the Indian space program “PSLV” back in 2017. In the mission carried out by PSLV, the rocket had set the record for taking 104 satellites into orbit.
By sending 143 satellites on a single rocket, SpaceX has really proven its capabilities and potential of being one of the space research and development organization.
It has been confirmed by SpaceX that the Transporter-1 mission is the first-ever mission for the new ridesharing program. The ridesharing program was first announced by SpaceX back in 2019 so it took two years for the program to finally be able to bring out the results.
When SpaceX made the initial announcement of the ridesharing program, it also laid out its plans and course of action. The organization revealed that it had plans for regularly scheduling launches for the ridesharing program. For each launch, the rocket will be carrying small but several satellites in one go into space. By doing this, the program will dedicate its resources to launching several satellites into space rather than launching just one big satellite in one go.
While laying out its plan and schedule for the program, SpaceX talked about the trend in the small satellites. The organization stated that there has been a lot of demand and hype about the small satellites in the past couple of years. More and more companies want to launch their satellites into space to make their data gathering process more stable and streamlined.
SpaceX explained that many organizations are unable to launch their satellites into space due to a lack of resources. Therefore, SpaceX is the only program that is making things possible for such engineers and scientists to launch their satellites into space.