Transporter-10 Rideshare Mission: SpaceX launches 53 Satellites To Orbits

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Transporter-10 rideshare mission carrying 53 payloads from a variety of private customers, at 2205 UTC on Monday (March 4) from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The Falcon 9 first stage returned as expected 7 minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff landing at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg, marking SpaceX's 280th successful booster landing overall and 205th consecutive landing of an orbital-class rocket. This is also the fifth flight of the B1081 Falcon 9 first stage booster which has previously launched the international Crew-7 astronaut mission, the CRS-29 cargo flight to the ISS, a batch of Starlink satellites and NASA's ocean-watching PACE satellite.

Today's launch placed 53 payloads into various orbits including True Anomaly's Jackal spacecraft, a wide range of cubesats and nanosats, and the Aires satellite built by spacecraft-manufacturer Apex which will carry multiple payloads itself.

"Rideshare deployment sequence complete" SpaceX announced on X, about 2 hours after liftoff.

SpaceX launches Transporter rideshare missions to deploy multiple smaller payloads for a large number of customers. The launches offer a convenient and more affordable way for private companies to place satellites into orbit without the needing to wait and "tag along" on the launch of a larger spacecraft. Today's mission is SpaceX's tenth to date.

The past 24 hours has been one of SpaceX 's busiest, as the company in an X post: "Three Falcon 9 launches in 20 hours, carrying to orbit: - 4 crewmembers headed to the @Space_Station - 53 rideshare spacecraft; - 23 @Starlink satellites."

WATCH SpaceX launch Transporter-10 mission