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Welcome to Edition 9.13 of the Rocket Report! This week, SpaceX celebrated the first orbital launch of its new Starship rocket. I’m not sure many people, at least those outside of SpaceX, expected it to take 14 flights of Starship before it technically reached low-Earth orbit, but Monday morning’s launch finally added that to SpaceX’s list of accomplishments with its new super-heavy rocket. Starship had gone 99 percent of the way to orbit before, only held back by safety concerns around the possibility of stranding the huge rocket in space. What was most notable for SpaceX with this Starship flight was that it unlocked a massive growth potential for Starlink, with the first 26 of the network’s new-generation Starlink V3 satellites successfully deployed Monday. As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar. Rocket Lab scores its biggest launch contract yet. Rocket Lab has signed what it calls its largest Electron launch service agreement to date, a 20-mission agreement with Synspective, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Synspective is a Japanese company with a growing fleet of radar Earth-imaging satellites. It is one of Rocket Lab’s most loyal customers, with the company’s light-class Electron rocket having launched 13 of Synspective’s StriX radar sats since 2020. The most recent Rocket Lab launch for Synspective occurred last Friday, September 25. Dedicated launch … Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle is sized for dedicated launches of payloads like Synspective’s StriX satellites. The latest agreement extends Synspective’s total bookings with Rocket Lab to 47 launches, including the 13 already flown. “Signing 20 launches in a single deal is a massive vote of confidence not just in Electron but in the launch cadence, mission reliability, and orbital precision that Rocket Lab consistently delivers,” Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said in a statement.
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