Soaring Prices: SpaceX Hikes Costs, Russia Resumes Launches

Soaring Prices: SpaceX Hikes Costs, Russia Resumes Launches

Welcome to the latest edition of the Rocket Report, where we delve into the dynamic changes within the rocket industry. This week, the spotlight is on SpaceX's decision to increase its launch prices, as well as Russia's efforts to repair its damaged launch pad.

The big news this week is NASA's shake-up of the Artemis program. On paper, the changes appear to be quite sensible. Canceling the big new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket and replacing it with a commercial upper stage, almost certainly United Launch Alliance's Centaur stage, should result in cost savings. The changes also relieve some of the pressure for SpaceX and Blue Origin to rapidly demonstrate cryogenic refueling in low-Earth orbit. The Artemis III mission is now a low-Earth orbit mission, using SLS and the Orion spacecraft to dock with one or both of the Artemis program's human-rated lunar landers just a few hundred miles above the Earth—no refueling required. Artemis IV will now be the first lunar landing attempt.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

Sentinel missions

The European Space Agency has selected four Earth observation missions as the next generation of its Copernicus program, which provides free and open data to support environmental monitoring and climate change research. The four selected missions—CRISTAL, CIMR, CHIME, and CO2M—will launch in the late 2020s and early 2030s.

SpaceX launch prices are going up

SpaceX is raising its launch prices, with the cost of a Falcon 9 launch now ranging from $67 million to $97 million, up from a previous range of $50 million to $85 million. The company cited increased commodity and logistics costs, as well as strong demand for its services, as reasons for the price hike.

The new pricing puts SpaceX in line with its competitors, such as United Launch Alliance, which charges around $100 million for a single launch of its workhorse Atlas V rocket. The company said the increases will apply to new contracts, and existing customers will be able to lock in pre-existing prices. With the rise in launch costs, the pressure is on for SpaceX to continue improving its reusability efforts to keep prices competitive.

Russia fixes broken launch pad

Russia has resumed launching rockets from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, its newest and most advanced spaceport, after repairing a launch pad that was damaged in an incident last year. The country's space agency, Roscosmos, said the repairs were completed in May, and the first launch from the restored pad took place in June.

The damaged launch pad had forced Russia to rely on the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military-run spaceport located in the country's northwest, for its orbital launches. The successful restoration of the Vostochny launch facility is a significant milestone for Russia's space program, as it aims to reduce its dependence on the aging Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Upcoming launches

The next three launches on the calendar are:

• June 28: Falcon 9 | Starlink 5-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 4:41 pm EDT
• June 29: Long March 2D | Yaogan-35 group 02 | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 10:00 pm EDT
• June 30: Soyuz-2.1b | Kosmos-2558 | Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia | 5:00 am EDT