WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched more than 100 satellites in the ninth in a series of dedicated smallsat rideshare missions Nov. 11, the latest flight in a program that has generated both delight and disdain across the commercial space industry.
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:49 p.m. Eastern on the Transporter-9 mission. The booster, which previously launched 11 missions including Transporter-8 in June, landed back at the launch site seven and a half minutes after liftoff.
Transporter-9 carried 90 payloads deployed over the course of half an hour, starting about 55 minutes after liftoff, although confirmations of a successful deployment were initially missing for several of the satellites. Those payloads included several orbital transfer vehicles that will later deploy their satellites, bringing the total satellites on the launch to more than 110.
The customer with the most payloads on Transporter-9 was Planet. The company had 36 of its Dove imaging cubesats, collectively called Flock 4Q, on the launch. It also flew Pelican-1, a tech demo satellite for its future Pelican and Tanager high-resolution and hyperspectral imaging satellites.
Other satellite constellation operators that flew satellites on Transporter-9 include Spire, which operates a constellation to collect weather and vessel tracking data, as well as synthetic aperture radar imaging companies Iceye and Umbra. Spire’s set of satellites included three satellites for GHGSat to monitor greenhouse gas satellites, one of which is the first commercial satellite for tracking carbon dioxide emissions.
Among the newcomers on the launch was Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer best known for producing consumer electronics devices like Apple’s iPhone. The company, also known as Hon Hai Technology Group, included its first two cubesats, Pearl-1H and Pearl-1C, on the mission. Those spacecraft are “a pilot run as proof of the concept…
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