What does it cost to launch…

A dedicated Falcon 9 launch lists at $74M as of 2026-10-11: SpaceX's price sheet quotes that through 2026 for up to 5,500 kg to geostationary transfer orbit, as Spaceflight Now reported. Divided by the 22,800 kg SpaceX lists to low Earth orbit (a fully expendable figure) it is about $3,250/kg, a best case almost no mission reaches. Most customers never buy a whole rocket: SpaceX's rideshare price list charges $7,000 per kilogram for 2026 flights with a 50 kg minimum, so $350k buys a place on the same vehicle. SpaceX publishes no internal cost per flight; the list price is what customers pay, not what a flight costs SpaceX.

There is no public price list for a single CubeSat. CubeSats fly as slots in a dispenser on a larger mission, and the brokers that sell those slots (Exolaunch, D-Orbit and others) quote per mission. What is published is the wholesale price underneath: SpaceX's rideshare price list starts at $350k for a 50 kg booking and charges $7,000 per kilogram for 2026 flights. Under the CubeSat Design Specification a 6U may weigh up to 12 kg, which is $84,000 of launch mass at that rate; the dispenser, integration and broker margin make up the rest of a quote. Selected US universities and education nonprofits can apply to NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative for low-cost access to space.

It depends almost entirely on mass and whether you buy a seat or the whole rocket. A 50 kg smallsat rides a SpaceX Transporter mission for $350k ($7,000 per kilogram, 2026 price list), so a 150 kg satellite pays about $1.1M. A dedicated small launcher such as Electron carries up to 300 kg to your exact orbit; Rocket Lab publishes no list price, and its launch revenue averaged about $9.2M per launch in the first half of 2026. A dedicated Falcon 9 lists at $74M, quoted for up to 5,500 kg to geostationary transfer orbit.

Virgin Galactic opened a limited tranche of 50 suborbital seats in April 2026 at $750,000 each and closed bookings once it was oversubscribed; it expects commercial service on its new ships to begin in February 2027. Blue Origin has never published a New Shepard seat price (the first seat sold at auction for $28 million in 2021), and in January 2026 it paused New Shepard flights for at least two years. Orbit is a different league: a private seat on SpaceX's Crew Dragon has been reported at about $55 million, and NASA's inspector general (2019) estimated NASA's average at about $55 million per seat on SpaceX's Crew Dragon and about $90 million per seat on Boeing's Starliner.

A customer would pay the $74M Falcon 9 list price, but SpaceX launching its own satellites pays only its internal cost, which it does not publish. Its June 2026 prospectus says Starlink launches earn no inter-segment revenue; their launch costs are capitalised into the satellites. The best on-record figure is old: in May 2020 Elon Musk told Aviation Week that a reused Falcon 9 had a marginal cost of about $15 million in the best case. Falcon 9 Starlink missions now carry up to 29 V2 Mini satellites; on Starship Flight 14 (September 28, 2026) SpaceX deployed 26 larger V3 satellites, and it expects Starship to carry up to 60 V3s per launch.

GPS launches are bought by the US Space Force under National Security Space Launch contracts, not at the commercial list price. A published data point: in April 2016 the Air Force awarded SpaceX a firm-fixed-price GPS III launch contract worth $82.7 million. In October 2025 the Space Force assigned seven future missions: $714 million for five SpaceX launches and $428 million for two ULA launches, one of them the GPS IIIF-4 satellite. The satellites cost more than the rides: a May 2025 order for two GPS IIIF satellites was worth $509.8 million.

NASA buys station cargo by the mission under Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts. Its inspector general found that the first contracts paid SpaceX an average of $152.1 million per mission over 20 missions and Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman) $262.6 million over 11, about $63,200 per kilogram of cargo capability, and projected $71,800 per kilogram for the second-round CRS-2 contracts (2018 report). That is many times the $3,250/kg a full dedicated Falcon 9 works out to, because the spacecraft, not the rocket, is most of the cost.

The launch is the small part. The Planetary Society's accounting of Perseverance puts launch services on the Atlas V 541 in 2020 at $243 million, spacecraft development at $2.2 billion and about $300 million for operations over the two-year prime mission: about $2.7 billion in total. Mars needs a high-energy escape trajectory and a launch window that comes around about every 26 months. At the small end, NASA's twin ESCAPADE orbiters, built by Rocket Lab and launched on New Glenn in November 2025, were roughly an $80 million mission.

NASA buys the launches for NOAA's big geostationary weather satellites. It put the total cost of launching GOES-T, on an Atlas V 541 in March 2022, at about $165.7 million, and of GOES-U, on a Falcon Heavy in June 2024, at about $152.5 million: launch service plus other mission-related costs. The satellites and ground system are the bigger bill: NOAA estimated the four-satellite GOES-R series at $10.9 billion through 2036 (GAO, 2012). Small commercial weather sensors ride rideshare missions instead, where SpaceX's price list starts at $350k for 50 kg.

Launch is usually a small share of a flagship telescope budget. NASA put the total cost of launching the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy at about $255 million, launch service and other mission costs together; Roman launched on August 30, 2026. The James Webb Space Telescope rode an Ariane 5 provided by ESA, against a NASA lifecycle estimate of $9.66 billion (2018). The optics, detectors and testing are where the money goes.

NASA's Office of Inspector General put the production and operating cost of each of the first four Artemis missions (the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft and ground systems) at $4.1 billion (2021 report). A landing adds the Human Landing System: SpaceX's Starship lander contract for Artemis III was worth $2.89 billion (2021), and Blue Origin's Blue Moon contract for Artemis V $3.4 billion (2023). Apollo cost $25.8 billion between 1960 and 1973, about $309 billion in 2025 dollars, by The Planetary Society's reconstruction.

Launch cost for a constellation is set by how many orbital planes you need, not just how many satellites. Twenty 100-kilogram satellites in one plane are 2,000 kg, about $14M at SpaceX's $7,000/kg rideshare rate before dispensers and integration; spreading them across several planes means several launches or a transfer vehicle. A dedicated Falcon 9 at $74M buys your own plane and altitude. Replenishment is permanent: a five-year design life means relaunching a fifth of the constellation every year.

A hosted payload, your sensor flying on somebody else's satellite, is priced by negotiation: the host charges for the mass, power, pointing and data it gives up, and no operator publishes a rate card. NASA's TEMPO air-quality instrument, for example, flies on the commercial Intelsat 40e satellite, launched in April 2023. The alternative is your own satellite plus a ride, where the published floor is SpaceX's rideshare at $350k for 50 kg. The trade is control: you fly when the host flies, point where the host points, and live as long as the host lives.

Do the raw arithmetic and a 1U CubeSat is almost free to launch: the CubeSat Design Specification (Rev. 14.1) allows up to 2 kg for a 1U (earlier revisions, under 1.33 kg), and at SpaceX's $7,000 per kilogram rideshare rate that is $14,000 of launch mass ($9,310 at 1.33 kg). But SpaceX sells a 50 kg minimum for $350k, not single kilograms, so a 1U flies as one slot in a dispenser that a broker has bought and subdivided. Brokers quote that slot per mission and publish no price list; the difference from the raw-mass figure is the dispenser, the integration campaign and the broker's margin.

About $700k on a rideshare: 100 kg is twice SpaceX's 50 kg minimum, so you pay the $7,000 per kilogram rate (2026 flights) straight through and get dropped in the mission's orbit, typically sun-synchronous. If you need your own orbit or date, a dedicated Electron carries up to 300 kg; Rocket Lab publishes no list price, and at its average launch revenue of about $9.2M that is $92,000/kg for a 100 kg satellite flying alone, roughly 13 times the rideshare price. A dedicated Falcon 9 at $74M only makes sense for a whole plane of them.

For the launch alone, SpaceX's price sheet lists a Falcon 9 at $74M for up to 5,500 kg to geostationary transfer orbit with a reusable booster, about $13,450/kg for a satellite that uses all of it. Falcon Heavy, last listed at $97M in 2022, carries far more (26,700 kg to GTO at SpaceX's maximum) and can insert directly into GEO, saving the satellite months of orbit raising. Europe's Ariane 6 carries 11,500 kg to GTO; Arianespace publishes no list price, and an Ariane 64 can fly two satellites at once, so each operator pays a share. The satellite itself is quoted separately and, for a large GEO bus, is usually the bigger number.

The launch is priced by how much mass the rocket can throw toward the Moon, which is a fraction of what it lifts to low Earth orbit. Falcon Heavy was last listed at $97M in 2022, about $1,520/kg to low Earth orbit at SpaceX's maximum, but SpaceX publishes no trans-lunar injection figure, so a per-kilogram price to the Moon cannot be worked out from published numbers. ULA's Vulcan Centaur lists 11,500 kg to trans-lunar injection in its six-booster configuration, and ULA publishes no list price. Falcon 9 has launched commercial robotic landers for NASA's CLPS programme; their launch prices were not published. Crewed landers are priced as government programmes.

Rocket Lab publishes no list price, but its launch revenue averaged about $9.2M per launch in the first half of 2026 (up from $7.5M a year earlier; Electron and HASTE launches together). Electron carries up to 300 kg to low Earth orbit (200 kg to sun-synchronous orbit), so at that average a full rocket is $30,670/kg, against $7,000/kg ($2.1M for 300 kg) on a SpaceX rideshare. The difference is the price of choosing your own orbit, inclination and launch date, being the primary payload, and flying from Mahia in New Zealand or Wallops Island in Virginia on your schedule.

The launch mass is almost nothing: cremated remains fly as symbolic samples of a few grams, and at the $7,000 per kilogram SpaceX rideshare rate a gram costs $7 to launch, ten grams $70. Memorial operators quote far more than that per participant, and the difference is not the rocket. They buy or share a rideshare slot (SpaceX's minimum is $350k for 50 kg), then build or lease a host spacecraft, machine and seal the individual capsules, run the integration campaign and stage a launch-day ceremony for families. Price also tracks the destination: an Earth-orbit flight that eventually re-enters, a suborbital flight that returns the capsule, or a deep-space flight that never comes back.