The Sharing Economy Reaches Orbit

How Satellite Operators Learned to Stop Worrying and Share the Bus

Here’s something that would have seemed absurd to satellite engineers twenty years ago: In November 2025, SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission packed 140 payloads from more than 30 customers across 16 countries onto a single Falcon 9 rocket. Among those payloads were satellites carrying other companies’ payloads as hosted guests. It’s sharing all the way down—rideshare launches carrying satellites with rideshare payloads, all talking to ground stations that dozens of other missions use simultaneously.