SpaceX is set to launch 11 satellites on a rideshare mission from Florida tonight (April 7).
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) tonight at 7:16 p.m. EDT (2316 GMT), kicking off the 11-satellite Bandwagon-1 mission.
SpaceX will stream the launch live via its X account, beginning about 10 minutes before liftoff.
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“On board this mission are 11 spacecraft including KOREA’s 425Sat, HawkEye 360’s Clusters 8 & 9, Tyvak International’s CENTAURI-6, iQPS’s QPS-SAR-7 TSUKUYOMI-II, Capella Space’s Capella-14, and Tata Advanced Systems Limited’s TSAT-1A,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description.
The Falcon 9’s first stage will come back to Earth for a vertical landing about 7.5 minutes after liftoff, if all goes according to plan. It will touch down at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1 facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next door to KSC.
It will be the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to the mission description.
While this will be the first mission in SpaceX’s new Bandwagon program, the company is no stranger to rideshare launches.
SpaceX has sent 10 such missions to orbit via its Transporter program, the most recent of which lifted off last month. The first Transporter mission, which launched in January 2021, delivered 143 satellites to orbit, a single-flight record that still stands today.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
