Transporter 11: SpaceX Launches 116 Satellites In Rideshare Mission

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 116 different satellites lifted off Friday at 1856 UTC, from Space Launch Complex 4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Elon Musk company's Transporter 11 mission is to deploy a range of payloads from different customers.

The Falcon 9 reusable first stage returned to Earth roughly eight minutes after liftoff as expected, landing nearby the launch site. This was the 12th successful flight for the veteran booster.

"Rideshare deployment sequence complete," SpaceX announced on X, confirming the payloads have been deployed, less than 3 hours after liftoff.

Among Transporter 11 payloads is an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX chip. The chip, a noted artificial intelligence and edge computing graphics processing unit (GPU), will be shielded with a nanoparticle-infused polymer made by Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), a spin-out from Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology. The university already did a test on the International Space Station, but this will be the first time it shields real hardware during a space mission.

This is SpaceX's 11th dedicated smallsat rideshare program mission, a program the company says, "significantly increases access to space for small satellite operators around the world."

The spacecraft launched by Falcon 9 as part of the rideshare program range from Earth observation satellites to in-space manufacturing, robotics, student research projects, tech demos for human spaceflight, SpaceX writes on their website.

Transporter 11 is SpaceX's 80th launch of 2024, with more than 70% of the launched satellites devoted for the company's Starlink internet constellation. This is also the Musk company's 375th mission to date.