WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched more than 70 payloads in the latest in its series of dedicated rideshare missions that have reshaped the small satellite industry.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:43 a.m. Eastern March 15 on the Transporter-13 mission. It was the second of three launches the company performed in a little more than 12 hours, after the launch of the Crew-10 mission from the Kennedy Space Center and before a launch of Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX said Transporter-13 carried 74 payloads, including hosted payloads and satellites that will be deployed later from an orbital transfer vehicle by D-Orbit. SpaceX’s website listed 47 separate deployments planned over 90 minutes.
As with previous Transporter missions, this launch included a mix of new and returning customers from government and industry. Spire flew seven of its Lemur satellites on Transporter-13, while Iceye launched four more of its synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. Iceye said one of the four was the company’s first “Gen4” satellite with an antenna double the size of the previous model and with twice the power.
Another returning customer is Varda Space Industries, which launched its third orbital processing and return capsule mission, W-3. It comes on the heels of W-2, launched on Transporter-12 in January and whose capsule landed in Australia Feb. 28. Varda said the W-3 capsule will also land in Australia after a few weeks in orbit, testing an inertial measurement unit for the U.S. Air Force.
Among first-time customers, Albedo launched Clarity-1, the startup’s first satellite. It is designed to operate in very low Earth orbit and provide imagery at resolutions as sharp as 10 centimeters. Also on board was IOD-1, the first satellite for Startical, a European startup planning a constellation to provide aircraft communications over polar and oceanic regions. The 25-kilogram satellite was built by GomSpace. MuonSpace launched its FireSat Protoflight satellite, a prototype for its planned FireSat constellation for wildfire monitoring.
NASA used Transporter-13 to launch a space science mission. The Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission features three 6U cubesats flying in formation to map electrical currents linked to auroras in the upper atmosphere. “EZIE will help us understand how these currents form and evolve, at scales we’ve never probed,” said Larry Kepko, EZIE mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a post-launch statement.
The Transporter series of rideshare missions to sun-synchronous orbit, along with Space’s newer Bandwagon missions to mid-inclination orbits, remains in high demand among satellite developers. They are also a continuing source of consternation for small launch companies, who say they cannot compete on price, in some cases alleging SpaceX is conducting those missions at a loss to drive out competition.
“Cost is still an issue because you have a player that has dropped costs tremendously. It’s obviously helped the market boom, but now everybody else is trying to meet those prices,” said Stella Guillen, chief commercial officer of Isar Aerospace, a German small launch vehicle developer, during a panel at the Satellite 2025 conference March 11.
“Why is there a market for smallsats today? I can answer this question, because there’s a price of $6,000 per kilogram. Otherwise, this market would not exist,” said Marino Fragnito, chief commercial officer and launch services director at Avio, developer of the Vega C rocket, on the same panel. He was citing the current price for SpaceX rideshare launches.
“I cannot do that. Nobody can do it,” he continued. “Not even SpaceX. They do it at a loss.”
Other launch companies have argued that while rideshare missions like Transporter are useful for companies as they launch their first satellites, they will shift to dedicated launches on small vehicles as they build out their constellations so they have more control over orbits and schedule, a point made by some emerging launch companies during another Satellite 2025 panel.
Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, made a similar argument in a statement after the March 14 launch of his company’s Electron rocket carrying a satellite for iQPS, a Japanese company developing a constellation of SAR satellites. All three of Rocket Lab’s launches so far this year have been for customers deploying constellations.
“Every Electron launch in 2025 so far has been to expand a satellite constellation and with this latest mission success, you can see why,” he said. “Electron provides our customers with total flexibility and control over their schedule, orbit, and other critical mission elements to create their constellation exactly as they need it.”
Notably, though, some of the customers on Transporter-13, like Iceye and Spire, are companies that rely heavily on those rideshare missions to build out and replenish their constellations.