SpaceX to launch 64 satellites in record-breaking mission

Elon Musk's company is scheduled to launch a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Monday between 1:32 pm and 2 pm ET after a series of delays triggered by bad weather and last-minute inspections for the rocket. It will be one of the largest satellite ride-sharing missions ever launched, and the most crowded single mission in US history, according to Spaceflight, SpaceX's customer for the launch.

The mission illustrates the growing demand to launch small satellites, modern devices that some companies hope will empower an array of new businesses — from internet service to supply chain monitoring.

For SpaceX, Monday's mission, called SSO-A, will mark its 19th launch of 2018, surpassing its previous annual record of 18 launches last year.

It will also be the first time Musk's company will attempt to send one of its rocket boosters to space for a third time.

SpaceX's goal is to drastically reduce the cost of a launch by reusing the hardware, a feat its competitors long thought was impossible or uneconomical.

The first-stage booster lined up for the SSO-A mission has flown twice in the past six months — first on May 11 for the Bangabandhu mission and again August 7 for Merah Putih.

Satellite ride sharing

SpaceX's customer for this mission, Spaceflight, aims to be a sort of Uber service for space. The company has for years worked as a liaison between small satellite companies and launch providers, looking to put small payloads onto rockets with extra room on board.

"We started off just selling the excess capacity on whatever launches were out there," Spaceflight president Curt Blake told CNN Business in a recent interview. "Then, we said, 'Wow demand is so big, we should just buy a whole rocket ourselves.' That's how this mission came to be."

SSO-A will be the first time Spaceflight has filled a rocket entirely with its small satellite customers. They come from 34 companies and organizations across 17 countries.

They include Australia-based Fleet Space Technologies, which aims to connect remote devices to the internet via satellite. Two companies — US-based Capella Space Corporation and Finland's ICEYE — will launch satellites that seek to use advanced radars to track airplanes or ships, even in cloudy weather. A group of middle school students from Florida is sending an experimental astrobiology satellite. And an art project, funded by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, that pays homage to the first African American astronaut, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., will also take flight.

Deploying all 64 satellites safely is tricky business. The devices, which span a variety of shapes and sizes, will ride to space affixed to sides of a large metal structure, called a payload stack, that will be shielded by the Falcon 9's nose cone during launch. Once in orbit, the nose cone will fall away, and the satellites will pop off from the payload stack in a carefully orchestrated sequence.

Crowded ridesharing missions like this one have been executed before. India's space agency last year shattered a world record by launching 104 small satellites with a single rocket. Another mission from Russia in 2014 deployed 37 satellites.

Smallsats and space debris

There is a massive backlog of small satellites waiting to get to orbit. And companies including SpaceX and OneWeb are racing to send constellations of thousands of high-speed internet satellites into low-Earth orbit.

While hitching a ride with larger payloads is considered the cheapest option for getting to space, many nascent rocket companies are promising lightweight rockets that can be mass produced and make cheap, frequent trips to orbit.

One such company, US-based Rocket Lab, became the first to reach orbit, and has notched two missions so far. Its backlog of customers is so long that CEO Peter Beck told CNN Business the company is "not constrained by customers right now — we're only constrained by how quickly we can build rockets."

The massive influx of new satellites into low-Earth orbit poses difficult questions for the space sector, particularly when it comes to orbital debris.

The issue took center stage last month for the US Federal Communications Commission, which authorizes telecom satellites for launch. The agency is considering updating a set of 2004 rules, "seeking to keep pace with technological and market changes, and to incorporate improvements in debris mitigation practices," the FCC said.

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