SpaceX says that demand for Transporter missions remains high even as the company has increased prices: a 200-kilogram satellite that would have cost $1 million to launch at the beginning of 2022 now costs $1.3 million. ION SCV-010 carries several cubesats, including two for Kepler Communications, while Vigoride-6 carries NASA’s two Low-Latitude Ionosphere/Thermosphere Enhancements in Density (LLITED) cubesats among other payloads. Transporter-7 also carried two orbital transfer vehicles, ION SCV-010 for D-Orbit and Vigoride-6 for Momentus. AstroForge, a startup with long-term plans for asteroid mining, launched a small satellite that will test its ability to refine metals from asteroid materials in orbit. Sateliot, a Spanish company working on satellite-based internet of things services, launched a satellite called The GroundBreaker that it says is the first to be able to communicate directly with devices using 5G standards. Orbital Sidekick launched the first two satellites of its six-satellite Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellite, or GHOSt, constellation to provide hyperspectral imagery. Two others were from its space services business: one for Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology equipped with a hyperspectral camera and a sensor for measuring soil moisture, while the ADLER-2 satellite for the Austrian Space Forum and Findus Venture GmbH will characterize the debris environment of low Earth orbit and study atmospheric aerosols. Spire had three satellites on the launch, but only one was for its own network for collecting weather, maritime and aviation tracking data. Umbra launched another synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite. HawkEye 360 launched its seventh cluster of three satellites for radiofrequency (RF) monitoring and Unseenlabs launched its BRO-9 satellite, also for RF monitoring. Satellogic had four imaging satellites onboard while GHGSat had three satellites for greenhouse gas monitoring. Several companies used the launch to augment existing constellations of satellites. This was the first in SpaceX’s series of Transporter dedicated smallsat rideshare missions to launch from Vandenberg, after the first six launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch carried 51 payloads, SpaceX said, although it did not release a full list of the satellites on board. On this flight, though, the booster reversed that, firing a single engine for the entry burn but three for landing, an approach SpaceX has previously used for landings of Falcon Heavy side boosters but not for the Falcon 9. Falcon 9 missions have previously used three engines on its entry burn and a single engine for landing. That affected the landing of the booster. Company representatives said on the launch webcast that they will use the shorter nozzle, which saves money, on launches that do not need as much performance, but retain the longer nozzle for higher-performance missions. It was the first Falcon 9 launch to use a shorter nozzle on the rocket’s upper-stage engine. This launch, the 23 rd Falcon 9 mission of the year, did have some novelties. The upper stage then performed two more maneuvers before deploying the final, and largest, payload, the 800-kilogram IMECE imaging satellite built by Turkish research institute Tübitak Uzay 2 hours and 35 minutes after liftoff. Those payloads were released over a span of about 20 minutes. Most of the payloads were deployed starting an hour after liftoff, following a second burn of the upper stage. The upper stage reached orbit a little more than eight minutes later, shortly after the first stage landed back at the launch site. Eastern, after several days of weather-related delays. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on the Transporter-7 mission at 2:48 a.m. WASHINGTON - SpaceX launched more than 50 satellites early April 15 on the latest in a series of dedicated Falcon 9 smallsat rideshare missions.
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