SpaceX launched 11 satellites from Florida tonight (April 7) on its first Bandwagon-1 class rideshare mission, and the evening rocket landed within minutes.
A Falcon 9 rocket launched the 11-satellite Bandwagon-1 mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 7:16 p.m. EDT (2316 GMT) tonight. The spacecraft successfully reached orbit, and SpaceX ended its live broadcast early at the request of its customer, South Korea, which flew its Project 425 SAR synthetic aperture radar satellite, according to Spaceflight Now.
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“The mission included 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 Advanced, Systems Tamitat-14,” SpaceX wrote in a statement. Job description.
The Falcon 9's first stage, if all went according to plan, returned to Earth for a vertical landing 7.5 minutes after liftoff. It touched down at SpaceX's Landing Zone 1 facility at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next to KSC.
According to the mission description, this is the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster.
While this is the first mission in SpaceX's new Bandwagon program, the company is no stranger to rideshare launches.
SpaceX has sent 10 such missions into orbit through its Transporter program, the most recent of which lifted off last month. The first transporter mission, launched in January 2021, delivered 143 satellites into orbit, which is still there today.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include results from SpaceX's successful Bandwagon-1 launch.
