SpaceX launched a slew of satellites to orbit from California today (Jan. 14).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 131 different payloads lifted off on the company's Transporter 12 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 2:09 p.m. EST (1909 GMT; 11:09 a.m. local California time).
That's a big number, but it's not a record for most payloads sent up on a single launch. That mark is 143, which SpaceX set in January 2021 on the Transporter 1 mission.
The rocket's first stage booster landed back at Vandenberg about 7.5 minutes after liftoff in a ground landing at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. It was the company's 397th landing of an orbital class rocket.
Today's mission marked the second flight for this particular booster. It also flew the NROL-126 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office on Nov. 30 of last year, according to the Transporter 12 mission description.
As its name suggests, Transporter 12 is the 12th mission in SpaceX's Transporter series, which sends satellites from a variety of customers aloft on a single rocket.
Thirty-seven of the 131 payloads going up today belong to San Francisco company Planet, which operates three constellations of Earth-observing satellites. Thirty-six of the 37 Planet craft are "SuperDove" cubesats, shoebox-sized craft that collect images with a resolution of about 10 feet (3 meters) per pixel. The other one is Pelican-2, whose resolution is about 7.5 times sharper than that.
"Additionally, Planet has collaborated with NVIDIA to equip Pelican-2 with the NVIDIA Jetson platform for edge AI and robotics to power on-orbit computing — with the aim of vastly reducing the time between data capture and its availability for customers," Planet wrote in a December 2024 statement.
"Pelican-2 is designed to rapidly convert precise spatial data into near-real-time insights by utilizing AI-powered solutions for use cases including object detection, vegetation and crop type classification, and disaster response," the company added.
Related: SpaceX launches 116 satellites on epic Transporter 11 rideshare mission, lands rocket (video)
The Transporter 12 payloads will be deployed into low Earth orbit from the Falcon 9's upper stage over a roughly 90-minute stretch beginning about 54 minutes after launch.
SpaceX has launched a total of 13 rideshare missions to date — the 11 Transporter flights and two in a different program known as Bandwagon. Together, these missions have lofted about 1,100 payloads for more than 130 different customers, according to the Transporter 12 description.
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