Satellite companies are facing increasing difficulty in booking rockets to carry their equipment into orbit, and the crisis could worsen if Elon Musk’s American rocket and space communications company SpaceX carries out its potential plan to stop commercial flights with the Falcon 9 rocket after 2028, while maintaining a limited number of government missions. Although the company's CEO Gwynne Shotwell previously indicated that the rocket would continue in service until 2030 or 2032.

The launch window is narrowing for thousands of satellites

According to a report published by the American website Ars Technica, which specializes in technology and science, satellite operators are feeling acute anxiety as demand for launches rises while competing rockets are delayed. The reusable Falcon 9 has become the backbone of the Western market after Russia’s decline, but SpaceX has already surpassed its peak operation after launching 165 missions last year and may launch about 20 fewer this year, reducing available capacity at a time when companies are racing to build new space networks.

Starlink is changing Elon Musk's accounts

SpaceX figures reveal the reason for the decline in external customer attraction. The company achieved $7.8 billion in the second quarter, of which $4.3 billion came from the satellite internet service Starlink. Space services accounted for less than 12%, and commercial flights were a small part of that. Therefore, using each launch to deploy Starlink satellites or build orbital data centers may be more profitable than carrying competitors' satellites. If customers do not switch smoothly to Starship or other companies' rockets, the years 2029 and 2030 could become a real bottleneck for commercial access to space.