SpaceX launched more than 50 satellites early April 15, as the latest part of a series of special Falcon 9 missions that share satellite access. Falcon 9 took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as part of the Transporter-7 mission at 2:48 a.m. ET after several days of weather delays. The upper stage entered orbit in a little over eight minutes, shortly after the first stage landed at the launch site.

Most of the payloads were deployed one hour after launch, after the second upper stage combustion. These loads were released in about 20 minutes. The upper stage then performed two more maneuvers before deploying the 800-kilogram IMECE satellite, the final and largest payload built by Turkey’s Tübitak Space Research Institute, 2 hours and 35 minutes after takeoff.

There were some innovations in this launch, which is the 23rd Falcon 9 mission this year. This was the first Falcon 9 launch to use a shorter nozzle on the rocket’s upper stage engine. During the launch broadcast, company officials said they would use the money-saving shorter nozzle for launches that didn’t require a lot of performance, but would save the longer nozzle for higher performance missions.

This affected the landing of the launch vehicle. Earlier Falcon 9 missions used three engines for entry and one engine for landing. But in this flight the booster replaced one engine for entry, firing three engines for landing, an arrangement SpaceX had previously used to land Falcon Heavy side boosters, but not Falcon 9.

SpaceX said the launch carried 51 payloads, although it did not release the full list of satellites on board. This was the first in a series of small satellite sharing missions SpaceX launched from Vandenberg after the first six missions launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Several companies have used the launch to expand existing satellite constellations. Satellogic had four imaging satellites on board, while GHGSat had three greenhouse gas monitoring satellites. HawkEye 360 ​​launched its seventh cluster of three radio frequency (RF) tracking satellites, and Unseenlabs again launched the BRO-9 satellite for radio frequency tracking. Umbra launched another artificial aperture radar.

At launch, Spire had three satellites, but only one was dedicated to its own network to collect weather, sea and aviation data. The other two were from the space services business: one will characterize the ADLER-2 satellite for the Saudi Arabian King University of Science and Technology equipped with a hyperspectral camera and soil moisture sensor, and for the Austrian Space Forum and Findus Venture GmbH. Investigate the debris environment and atmospheric aerosols of low Earth orbit.

Orbital Sidekick launched the first two satellites of the six-satellite Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellite, or GHOST constellation, to provide hyperspectral images. Spanish company Sateliot, which works on IoT satellite services, has launched The GroundBreaker, which it says is the first satellite to communicate directly with devices using 5G standards. AstroForge, a startup with long-term plans to mine asteroids, has launched a small satellite that will test its ability to extract metals from orbiting asteroid materials.

Transporter-7 also carried two orbiters: ION SCV-010 for D-Orbit and Vigoride-6 for Momentus. ION SCV-010 carries multiple cube satellites, two for Kepler Communications, while Vigoride-6 carries two NASA Low Latitude Ionosphere/Thermosphere Density Enhancement (LLITED) cube satellites, among other payloads.

SpaceX says demand for Carrier missions is strong even as the company is raising prices: A 200-kilogram satellite that would have cost $1 million to launch in early 2022 now costs $1.3 million. “We think we can deliver great value to our customers,” said Tom Ochinero, SpaceX’s senior vice president of commercial affairs, on the company’s overall pricing strategy at a panel at the Satellite 2015 conference on March 15. “I don’t think we’ve lost any competitive advantage.”

Small launch vehicle developers say it’s hard to compete with SpaceX despite their high prices. “I think the point is, they’ve lowered prices in the market. Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer, Adam Spies, had this to say about SpaceX’s Transporter missions during the SmallSat Symposium in February:

But for customers, Carrier tasks were not only cost-effective. “The Transporter model, which shares journeys without an essential customer so you can get on time, is extremely valuable to the business in many ways,” said Pierre-Damien Vajour, CEO of Loft Orbital, in a recent interview. “The reliability and price achieved by SpaceX was outstanding.”