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WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched the third in its series of mid-inclination dedicated rideshare missions April 21, but with very few rideshare payloads on board.
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:48 p.m. Eastern on the Bandwagon-3 mission. The booster, on its third flight, touched down back at Cape Canaveral, landing on a pad adjacent to one where the booster from the SpX-32 cargo resupply mission launch had landed earlier the same day .
However, Bandwagon-3 carried only three payloads: the 425Sat-3 spacecraft for South Korea's military, Tomorrow-S7 for weather forecasting company Tomorrow.io and Phoenix, the first reentry vehicle by ATMOS Space Cargo, a German startup. By comparison, Bandwagon-1 carried 11 satellites while Bandwagon-2 had 30 satellites.
SpaceX didn't explain the low number of payloads, but industry sources said on background that the relatively modest demand for mid-inclination orbits and the timing of this mission, just four months after Bandwagon-2, likely contributed to the lack of rideshare payloads.
"Dedicated small launch is a real market, and it should not be confused with rideshare," Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview earlier this month during Space Symposium . "It's totally different."
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