SpaceX has put a sales pitch behind Starfall, its disk-shaped reentry capsule. A page at spacex.com/starfall promises «affordable, routine access to microgravity» and invites companies to get in touch about flying manufacturing, research or testing payloads, Teslarati and TeslaNorth report. TeslaNorth says the pitch first went up on October 20, the day SpaceX's third-quarter results said it had signed three commercial Starfall missions.
What a mission offers
- Payload: up to 1,000 kg.
- Power and data: 1 kW for the payload and an Ethernet interface.
- Connectivity: the payload stays online through Starlink for the whole flight, so researchers can pull data while the experiment is still in orbit.
- Duration: «tailorable to payload requirements». SpaceX contrasts weeks of continuous microgravity with the seconds offered by drop towers and parabolic flights.
Target customers
The page names three markets: biomedical research (stem-cell organoids, replacement tissue and layered biomaterials), pharmaceutical discovery (protein and small-molecule drug crystals, which form smaller and more uniform shapes without gravity-driven convection) and materials science, including semiconductors grown in vacuum and microgravity.
Built around Starship
«By launching on Starship, Starfall brings a reliable and scalable cadence previously unavailable to the market,» SpaceX writes. Teslarati notes that SpaceX said almost nothing about the capsule before its first flight in June, and that FAA and FCC filings described a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall able to return 2,200 pounds of cargo. On the Q3 call, President Gwynne Shotwell said the three new missions would fly on Starship.
Neither outlet found a price list or a date for the first customer flight on the page.