Bandwagon-1: SpaceX Launches 11 Satellites To Orbit In Rideshare Mission

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 11 satellites, lifted off at 2316 UTC on April 7, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. The reusable Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as expected, landing about 7.5 minutes after liftoff, at SpaceX's Landing Zone 1 facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, next door to KSC. This was the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to SpaceX.

Among the spacecraft aboard for the Bandwagon-1 rideshare flight, is South Korea's Project 425 SAR synthetic aperture radar satellite.

"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 satellites successfully reached orbit, with SpaceX ending its livestream early at the request of its South Korean customer.

Like its Transporter missions, the Bandwagon mission which starts with April 7's launch, is part of SpaceX's rideshare program to send groups of satellites at relatively low cost, to orbit for different customers from around the world.

WATCH the launch of the Bandwagon-1 mission