Sharing is Caring

SpaceX successfully launched three Planet Skysats on a ride share with the next 58 Starlink satellites (540 launched to date). As an early investor and early board member for both companies, I am delighted to see this collaboration.

“This is the result of SpaceX dramatically cutting the cost of access to launch,” said Mike Safyan, vice president of launch at Planet. “It’s significant. They cut the price so much we could not believe what we were looking at. With SpaceX being the lowest price option out there, they are the first port of call for us. There are lots of paths to orbit. We continue to engage with other launch providers, but we are always looking for the lowest cost and most reliable path to orbit.”
— ArsTechnica.

“Satellite start-up Planet Labs is taking advantage of SpaceX’s falling launch prices to greatly expand its constellation of orbiting cameras in the coming weeks, piggybacking on the company’s rockets to enable customers to capture high-resolution photographs of the world from space. The new system will be able to photograph any location in the world up to 12 times a day.

For about 30 years, launch prices were pretty flat, up until last summer,” Mr Marshall said. “Then SpaceX dropped its prices . . . That really is enabling for companies like ours. “The fundamental reason they are able to bring down prices is the reusability,” Mr Marshall said. “It’s too early to tell how the rest of the market will respond. Other people are certainly trying to keep our and other people’s business but it’s hard.”
— Financial Times

“Planet will launch the other three SkySats on another Starlink mission in July. “Because they’re launching Starlink so often there was a lot of flexibility with finding a time to launch that works for us,” Planet’s VP of launch Mike Safyan told CNBC. Each SkySat satellite is “roughly the size of a washing machine,” Safyan explained, with a mass of about 110 kilograms. SpaceX advertises rideshare mission at a price as low as $1 million per 200 kilograms.

Behind SpaceX, Planet has raised the second-most private equity of any company in the space sector, bringing in a total of over $400 million.” — CNBC

And for SpaceX.. that was 9 days and 8 hours between launches (Starlink 7 & 8) and broke the U.S. same pad launch-to-launch record (previously held by Gemini 7 and 6A at 11 days, 18 hours.)