Today at at 2:27PM ET / 11:27AM PT, Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on a mission called Transporter 5. Minutes after stage separation, the Falcon 9’s reusable first-stage booster made a rare land-based touchdown at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, not far from the launch site.
Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. Falcon 9 is the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket. Reusability allows SpaceX to repeatedly fly the Falcon 9 first stage, which in turn drives down the cost of space access.
As its name suggests, Transporter 5 is SpaceX’s fifth dedicated small-satellite rideshare mission. The first, Transporter 1, launched 143 satellites to orbit in January 2021 — a record for the most payloads lofted on a single mission.
This time we have 5 Seraphim portfolio companies utilising this cosmic rideshare to safely deliver payloads into orbit & beyond.
HawkEye: Launched Cluster 5. The constellation provides enhanced antenna functions for greater flexibility in detecting across a materially expanded range, which will double the constellation’s capacity for data collection, dramatically increasing the amount of data available to users.
D-Orbit: Launched ION SCV006, as part of their ‘Infinite Blue‘ mission.
Spire: Launched 5 Global sats. The company’s Space-as-a-Service (SPaaS) business had satellites and hardware onboard.
ICEYE: Sent 5 new SAR satellites into orbit via Exolaunch, this will be their 21st mission into orbit. The largest in ICEYE’s history.
Xona Space Systems: Launched their first in-space demo mission. Once in orbit, Xona will use this mission to validate their software & hardware for transmitting navigation signals from LEO.
Portfolio company Leo Labs once again activated Launch & Early Orbit tracking service to provide rapid location and identification support for satellite operators and their newly deployed payloads.
Congratulations to all the customers on the SpaceX Transporter 5 on another successful launch!
Watch the SpaceX coverage here
Watch the full coverage of the launch via Nasa here
