Totally Awesome – A massive game changer

On December 1st, Spaceflight will launch its SSO-A satellite ride share on a Falcon 9 B1046 booster from Vandenberg on the west coast of the USA.  SSO-A integrates 63 satellites into a  single stack –  in a single launch.  

The ability to deploy this many satellites into low earth orbit makes launching small satellites increasing economic.  With costs as low as $295,000 for a 5kg cube-sat –  its simply changes the game.  The pricing ranges from a high of $59k/kg for the smallest form-factor cube-sat of 34cm x 10cm x 10cm to $28k/kg for a 1000 kg 350cm x 200cm satellite.

The multi-satellite payload includes 49 CubeSats and 15 larger micro-satellites. They will be launched into sun-synchronous low-earth orbits.

The satellites belong to 34 government and commercial organizations from 17 countries — including the United States, Australia, India, Thailand, South Korea, Canada, Jordan, Kazakhstan, and nine European states (Italy, Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Germany, Poland, and Brazil).