COLORADO SPRINGS — SpaceX launched the primary in a brand new line of devoted rideshare missions April 7, delivering 11 business and army satellites into mid-inclination orbits.
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Area Heart’s Launch Complicated 39A at 7:16 p.m. Japanese on the Bandwagon-1 mission. The rocket’s first stage, making its 14th flight, landed again at Cape Canaveral’s Touchdown Zone 1 seven and a half minutes after liftoff.
The launch was the primary for a brand new collection of devoted rideshare missions supposed to enhance SpaceX’s current Transporter missions. Not like Transporter missions, which launch payloads into sun-synchronous orbits generally utilized by distant sensing satellites, the Bandwagon missions are supposed to ship payloads to low Earth orbits at inclinations of about 45 levels.
SpaceX introduced the Bandwagon missions on the Small Satellite tv for pc Convention final August, with plans to fly two such missions in 2024 and once more in 2025. The corporate stated on the time that mid-inclination orbits have been the second mostly requested orbit amongst rideshare prospects after sun-synchronous orbits.
Bandwagon-1 carried 11 satellites, with the most important prone to be a “425 Challenge” satellite tv for pc for South Korea’s army. The federal government’s Protection Acquisition Program Administration introduced in 2022 it could launch 5 satellites, 4 with artificial aperture radar (SAR) payloads and one with an optical/infrared payload, with SpaceX via 2025. The primary 425 Challenge satellite tv for pc, the one optical/infrared spacecraft, launched on a Falcon 9 in December 2023.
HawkEye 360 flew six of its radio-frequency geolocation satellites, known as Clusters 8 and 9, on Bandwagon-1. Different payloads embrace Capella Area’s Acadia-4 SAR satellite tv for pc, the QPS-SAR-7 SAR satellite tv for pc from iQPS, Fleet’s Centauri-6 satellite tv for pc for Web of Issues companies and TSAT-1A, an Earth imaging satellite tv for pc constructed by Tata Superior Methods Restricted in cooperation with Satellogic.
Clients stated they selected to fly their satellites on Bandwagon-1 as a result of the mid-inclination orbit supplied improved protection over low and mid latitudes in comparison with sun-synchronous orbits. HawkEye 360, for instance, famous in a press release that putting the Cluster 8 and Cluster 9 satellites in these orbits “will additional help HawkEye 360’s work to assist monitor and forestall Unlawful, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing throughout the Indo-Pacific area.”
SpaceX says it continues to see sturdy curiosity in its rideshare missions, each Transporter and Bandwagon. “We heard loud and clear from prospects they wished these companies,” Stephanie Bednarek, vice chairman of economic gross sales at SpaceX, stated throughout a panel on the Satellite tv for pc 2024 convention March 18. “It’s going nice and we’re actually comfortable.”
For the rideshare applications to be efficient, she stated prospects need to be prepared to slot in the corporate’s commonplace lodging. “We might ideally wish to see our prospects design to the usual companies that we offer,” she stated, though the corporate does provide add-on companies for rideshare missions. “Now that it’s been demonstrated a number of instances, we’re seeing an increasing number of prospects which might be designing to that individual field and repair that we provide.”
