SpaceX launches a record 143 satellites on one rocket, aces landing

space.com

4 points·edward··2 comments

951 are currently in orbit. I thought they only wanted 3000-7000, but I was incredibly wrong. They want 42,000 total?

30,000+12,000 satellites - 951 in orbit = 41,049 / 143 per launch = 287 more launches

Source of that is from wikipedia:

> On 15 October 2019, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) submitted filings to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on SpaceX's behalf to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites to supplement the 12,000 Starlink satellites already approved by the FCC.[16]

F9 can only deliver 60 Starlink sats per launch, which would be 685 more launches. (Transporter-1 delivered more because the satellites were lighter/smaller.)

SpaceX is currently developing Starship[1], which aims to increase the payload capacity to about 100,000 kg. The mass of a single Starlink v1.0 is 260 kg[2], which would be 384 sats per launch, although I've seen SpaceX talk about 400. If Starship was operational now, assuming the rate of 400 sats/launch, this would give us 103 more launches for the full constellation. For comparison, SpaceX launched 26 times in 2020, and is aiming for up to 54 launches in 2021[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

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