For the fourth time in 2023, SpaceX has launched a small satellite rideshare mission to low Earth orbit carrying multiple payloads. The Transporter 9 mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at the start of his 55-minute window at 10:49 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (18:49 UTC).
SpaceX said the launch included 113 payloads, 90 of which were deployed directly from the Falcon 9 rocket. The remaining 23 of his satellites will be deployed later from an orbital transport vehicle.
Spaceflight Now offers: Live broadcast of Transporter-9 launch On the Launch Pad live stream.
Multiple payloads were provided by Earth observation company Planet Labs PBC. The San Francisco-based company also sent 36 of his SuperDove satellites, joining his more than 500 satellites currently in orbit. The company also plans to launch a technology demonstration satellite called Pelican 1 that will be “equipped with Planet’s next-generation imaging sensors that will be deployed as part of the Pelican and Tanager constellations.”
The mission comes at the end of a week in which SpaceX launched a series of Starlink satellites and cargo replenishment missions to the International Space Station. The day also comes a day before the company prepares to launch two more satellites on behalf of Luxembourg-based satellite company SES.
The Transporter-9 mission launched into clear blue skies from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E). The first stage booster, empennage number B1071, returned to Vandenberg for touchdown at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4).
This includes Transporter-8, two National Reconnaissance Office missions, NROL-87 and NROL-85, German radar imaging satellite SARAh-1, NASA and French ocean research satellite SWOT, and six Starlink flights. This was B1071’s 12th mission. Delivery service.
Earth observation and technology demonstration
Just over 54 minutes into the mission, SpaceX began deploying its rideshare payloads, starting with a batch of 11 payloads specified by German company Exolaunch.
Initially it was one of the Canadian company’s three satellites. GHGSat:GHGSat-C9 “Juba”. It, along with GHGSat-C10 “Vanguard” and GHGSat-11 “Elliott”, are named after the children of corporate employees and are designed to monitor emissions. The company claims GHGSat-10 will be “the world’s first commercial CO2 monitoring payload.”
This flight also carried Djibouti-1A. The satellite is designed to “transmit data from the meteorological observatory of the Djibouti Center for Research and Research (CERD) to the control center in Djibouti, providing the necessary tools to understand the weather situation.” “By providing real-time data on a national scale, we can understand changes in water resources,” the publisher said. african universe.
Nearly an hour and a half into the mission, the final payload to deploy was FalconSAT-X, a satellite developed by the U.S. Air Force Academy. The Air Force describes the FalconSAT program as an “academic platform for a series of experiments for the aerospace industry and the Department of Defense.”