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Irene Klotz
August 12, 2025

SpaceX’s 14th Transporter mission launched with 70 rideshare payloads on June 23 from Vandenberg SFB, California.

Credit: SpaceX

SALT LAKE CITY—SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare mission, Transporter-1, which launched on Jan. 24, 2021, with 143 spacecraft aboard, holds the record for the largest number of satellites flown on a single rocket, but that milestone may be surpassed when the company starts shared launch services aboard Starship.

“I am optimistic that with Starship on the near-term horizon that record won’t stand for long,” SpaceX Senior Manager Veronica Foreman, with commercial sales special projects, said Aug. 12 at the 39th annual Smallsat conference here.

Foreman declined to comment if SpaceX has already starting planning its first Starship rideshare mission. The Starship-Super Heavy system is undergoing flight testing from SpaceX’s privately owned launch site in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. The reusable upper-stage Starship has not yet achieved orbital flight.

So far, more than 130 customers have purchased rideshares with SpaceX, which has flown multi-payload missions 30 times in the last five years. Seventeen of those flights have been dedicated Transporter missions to Sun-synchronous orbits and Bandwagon missions to mid-inclination orbits. All told, SpaceX has launched more than 1,400 rideshare spacecraft, Foreman said.

The company has booked rideshare customers through the end of 2028, she added. Standard pricing for the Transporter and Bandwagon missions is $6,500 per kg if customers are “fully compliant with our rideshare payload user’s guide,” Foreman noted.

Irene Klotz

Irene Klotz is Senior Space Editor for Aviation Week, based in Cape Canaveral. Before joining Aviation Week in 2017, Irene spent 25 years as a wire service reporter covering human and robotic spaceflight, commercial space, astronomy, science and technology for Reuters and United Press International.