SpaceX plans to launch 30 satellites into orbit early Saturday morning (December 21).
The Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Station at 6:34 a.m. EDT (1134 GMT, 3:34 a.m. local California time) on Saturday, launching a ride-sharing mission that SpaceX is calling Bandwagon-2.
The company will webcast the action live through its X account starting approximately 15 minutes before launch.
Bandwagon-2 includes 30 payloads, including payloads from the Korea Agency for Defense Development, “Arrow Science and Technology,” Exolaunch, HawkEye 360, Maverick Space Systems, Sidus Space, Tomorrow Companies Inc., True Anomaly, and Think Orbital. The satellite is going up. “SpaceX wrote: mission description.
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SpaceX has already launched one Bandwagon mission, Bandwagon-1, which launched 11 satellites last April. The company is also launching other ride-hailing missions through a series called “Transporter.”
SpaceX has launched 11 Transporter missions to date. The first satellite, which flew in January 2021, put 143 satellites into orbit, which is still a record for a single launch.
If all goes as planned on Saturday, Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth and land vertically at Vandenberg about eight minutes after launch.
According to the SpaceX mission description, this will be the 21st flight of this particular booster. That’s just three away from the company’s rocket reuse record.
The Bandwagon-2 mission description does not provide a schedule for the deployment of 30 satellites.
