Early this morning, 12:12 AM PDT at Vandenberg Space Force Base, SpaceX launched one of their Transporter Rideshare missions into a sun-synchronous orbit (as Transporter launches tend to). This flight, labelled Transporter 17, carried 81 different payloads. The flight was carried by booster B1097 on it's 11th flight, so still an "almost new" booster, and landed on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship 8-1/2 minutes after liftoff.
It's an interesting mix of payloads
The Transporter-17 mission continued SpaceX’s model of launching dozens of satellites from companies around the world. Once again, the majority of the payloads hitching a ride on this Falcon 9 rocket were manifested by Exolaunch, which has placed satellites on every Transporter mission going back to the start of the Smallsat Rideshare Program in 2020.
On this flight, Exolaunch was responsible for 49 out of the 81 satellites, representing 20 international customers.
An interesting set of payloads was a trio of Earth Observing satellites for the Earth Fire Alliance, which aims to put up a constellation of fire monitoring satellites aimed at tracking wild fires and helping to control them.
The Earth Fire Alliance stated on its website that it aims for a constellation of more than 20 satellites in low Earth orbit between 2027 and 2029, allowing it to have a roughly one hour revisit rate on wildfires with an ability to detect fires as small as five by five meters. It aims to ultimately have more than 50 satellites in orbit.
“This story is about living with fire: learning from it, adapting to it, harnessing it, and building resilience around it,” the nonprofit wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Inspired by a species of bird that has evolved alongside fire, our Black Kite Trio (BK-3) mission reflects Earth Fire Alliance’s vision of helping people, ecosystems, and communities confidently coexist with fire.”
This is the trio of satellites after being posed for a photograph between final test and loading onto the Transporter carrier.
A trio of FireSat satellites, which were manufactured by Muon Space on behalf of nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance. Image Credit: Earth Fire Alliance
Other Exolaunch-manifested payloads include four of Iceye’s synthetic aperture radar satellites, Bro-31, the first of Unseenlabs’ second-generation satellites designed for space-based radio detection; and Leonav-1, the United Arab Emirates first low Earth orbit PNT (position, navigation, and timing) satellite.
One that caught my eye is they put a 3D printer in orbit.
Polish-German manufacturing company, Orbital Matter, also flew its Replicator-2 satellite on this mission. It focuses on the capability of 3D printing materials in the vacuum of space.
“It has 4 of our Printer Assisted Deployment Systems (P.A.D.S) onboard, 2 of which will be used to deploy our custom in-house designed foldable solar array. The other two will be standalone printers, one of which is deploying a secret antenna payload,” wrote Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter CEO, on LinkedIn.
“The goal for this mission is to not only show that 3D printing is possible directly in the harsh space environment but also to show that it can be used for deployment right now! This is the latest in a string of missions focused on advancing our printing technology, with each mission getting us closer to the target of large scale and cheap solar power in orbit.”
Image credit: Robert Inhnatisin on LinkedIn
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