SpaceX Transporter-2 mission shows promise and challenges of mass rideshares

As SpaceX gets set to launch Transporter-2 early Friday evening, this second SpaceX mass rideshare is showing the promise of regularly scheduled missions, but does come with some challenges. Oh, and there’s lot of innovative technology being launched.

The exact number of payloads on Transporter-2 has not been released yet but will be smaller than the Transporter-1 mission which had 143 satellites including 10 SpaceX Starlink satellites, and nine Canadian satellites.

SpaceX was dealt a blow on May 10 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) denied the launch license of Momentus for their space tugs Vigoride. Momentus had two space tugs scheduled to be a part of the mission with upwards of 49 small satellites. Combined with another 88 or so satellites scheduled for the mission, the Transporter-2 mission would have had about 147 small satellites or hosted payloads on-board.

Canada’s Kepler Communications was to have had two satellites on the Momentus tug. They are now being scheduled to a later mission and Kepler hopes to have an as yet undetermined number of satellites on SpaceX’s Transporter-3 mission in December. Another Canadian satellite, a CubeSat from the University of Toronto Aerospace Team, the Heron MK2, was also scheduled for the Transporter-2 mission via a SpaceFlight contract, but was removed to give the team time to work through a radio licensing issue. Dylan Vogel at UTAT told SpaceQ that they are now looking to fly in Q2 of next year on another SpaceX Transporter mission.

SpaceX which early in its existence had ditched launching dedicated missions of small satellites in favour of more lucrative medium to large payloads, has made a renewed effort in recent years to try and capitalize on the burgeoning small satellite market. To that end they created the dedicated Transporter rideshare class of mission with at least two “fixed” windows per year.

So when Momentus had to pull out it created a problem. The launch had to go ahead, but could it maximize the launch capacity of the mission. The answer is no. Will SpaceX lose money on the mission? That’s unlikely, but we don’t know for sure. To its advantage, SpaceX is reusing the first stage booster (B1060) on this mission for the 8th time. On the first SpaceX Transporter mission they did include 10 Starlink satellites. There are none scheduled for this mission. Of the 49 Momentus payloads that had to be removed from the mission, a few were able to find a slot on the mission with other rideshare suppliers.

What’s on-board

One of the fascinating things about these mass rideshare missions, is the sheer number of satellites being launched and the technologies represented. Here’s the list of known satellites on the mission. The technologies being launched will be used for IoT, Earth Observation including Synthetic Aperture Radar, communications, propulsion, satellite servicing and various scientific instrumentation.

Spaceflight SXRS-5 Mission

On the same day the FAA denied Momentus its launch license, Spaceflight, the Seattle based launch services provider, announced its 36 payloads.

Here’s the list at that time representing 14 organizations, one undisclosed, from seven countries:

1. Aerospacelab’s Arthur (Belgium) – The primary objective of the Risk Reduction Flight (RRF) mission is to allow for satellite imagery resorting to the Optical Front-End (OFE), designed to provide a 5-meter resolution for the specified orbit of the spacecraft.
2. Astrocast’s IoT Nanosatellites (x5) (Switzerland) – Astrocast will be launching an additional 5 IoT Nanosatellites to its constellation. The Astrocast SatIoT Service enables companies to track IoT Assets in some of the world’s most remote regions.
3. HawkEye 360 Inc. (x3) (USA) – HawkEye Cluster 3 of their next-generation satellite constellation, which detects and geolocates radio frequency signals. 
4. In-Space Missions Limited (UK) – Faraday Phoenix – With a variety of technologies, communication and optical.
5. Kleos Space (x4) (Luxembourg) – Polar Vigilance Mission cluster of four RF reconnaissance satellites.
6. Loft Orbital (USA) – YAM-2 will have a variety of technologies including a demo for SpaceCain (Crypto ledger), IoT for RF.
7. Lynk Global Inc. (USA) – Shannon satellite: Lynk’s mission is to provide global ubiquitous connectivity to unmodified mobile phones and cellular devices.
8. NearSpace Launch Inc. (USA) – TagSat-2 mission is to provided 24/7 telemetry while hosting payloads for experimental testing.
9. OQ Technology (Luxembourg/UAE/Rwanda) – TIGER-2 5G IoT: The TIGER-2 mission is OQ Technology’s second mission that aims to start commercial service by providing global 5G IoT connectivity to customers using a 6U high power satellite and to secure strategic frequencies.
10. Orbit Fab (USA) – Tanker-001 Tenzing: Orbit Fab’s first operational fuel depot will provide propellant for the fast growing in-orbit servicing industry.
11. Orbital Sidekick Inc.(USA) – Aurora: The Aurora mission begins scalable delivery of commercial solutions using space-based hyperspectral imaging.
12. Spire Global (USA/UK)- LEMUR-2 (x4): The LEMUR–2 satellites collect Earth data to provide some of the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world. The LEMUR–2 also supports hosted software and payloads through Spire Space Services.
13. Swarm Technologies (x12) (USA) – SpaceBEES for IoT.
14. An undisclosed spacecraft

Exolaunch

Exolaunch will have 29 payloads on the Transporter-2 mission. This includes 10 microsats and 19 CubeSats.

• Loft Orbital (USA) – YAM-3 will have a variety of technologies including a demo for SpaceCain (Crypto ledger), IoT for RF.
• Satellogic (x4) (Argentina) – Earth observation.
• ICEYE (x2) (USA/Finland) – Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites.
• D2/AtlaCom-1 (Mexico) – Earth observation.
• TUBIN (Germany) – Is a nanosatellite project of the Technical University of Berlin to observe the Earth in infrared.

D-Orbit (Italy)

D-orbit has seven satellites under contract on their ION Satellite Carrier including three hosted payloads. The Carrier for this mission is called ION SCV Dauntless David.

“The mission manifest includes international clients, like the Spanish Elecnor Deimos, the Bulgarian EnduroSat, and the Kuwaiti Orbital Space, which will launch the country’s first radio amateur satellite. Also on board, under contract with ISILAUNCH and integrated into a QuadPack from Dutch satellite manufacturer ISISPACE, are Finnish Reaktor Space, Marshall Intech Technology from UAE, and the Royal Thai Airforce.”

• Deimos Space (Part of Elecnor Space – Spain) – Neptuno satellite.
• Endurosat (Bulgaria) – Spartan CubeSat.
• Orbital Space (Kuwait) – QMR-KWT: The educational mission will allow students from around the world to learn more about satellite communications by writing software code to be uploaded and executed on one of the satellite’s onboard computers in an out-of-this-world opportunity for students to Code in Space.
• Reactor Space (Austria) – W-Cube telecommunication satellite.
• Marshall Intech Technology (UAE) – Ghalib satellite.
• NAPA 2 / RTAF-SAT 2 (Royal Thai Air Force)

Other satellites

There are other satellites for which we’re not sure what SpaceX port they will be on. These include:

• PlanetIQ (USA) – GNOMES-2
• Capella (USA) – Capella 5 SAR satellite.
• Umbra Lab (USA) – Umbra-SAR 2001 Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite.
• DARPA/SDA/AFRL (USA) – 2x Mandrake 2A/2B microsats. The twin Mandrake 2 satellites will carry optical inter-satellite links for broadband data. According to DARPA these could form the basis of future optically meshed networks in LEO. The satellites were made in just nine months by Astro Digital with optical links from SA Photonics.
• General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (USA)- LINCS A/B telecommunications for the US Space Development Agency.