Archives for May 2022

Omnispace and Thales Alenia Space successfully launched and delivered the Omnispace Spark-2 satellite into orbit.

This marks the completion of the deployment phase of the “Omnispace Spark” program, the initial phase in the company’s development and delivery of the world’s first 5G capable satellite network.

Omnispace Spark-1, launched in April of 2022, and Omnispace Spark-2 will now be used to advance and validate the development and implementation of Omnispace’s global, non-terrestrial network (NTN). As prime contractor, Thales Alenia Space designed and built the Omnispace Spark satellites with the help of industry partners: NanoAvionics, ANYWAVES and Syrlinks. Omnispace Spark-2 was delivered into orbit by Exolaunch aboard a SpaceX Transporter mission.

The new-generation NGSO satellite constellation in LEO will operate in 3GPP band n256, which has been standardized for NTN operation, making direct-to enterprise and government IoT as well as consumer device connectivity possible worldwide.

“Thales Alenia Space, along with this incredible team of innovators, was instrumental in making Omnispace Spark possible, and we are thankful for their expertise and execution. With deployment of the Omnispace Spark program now complete, we look forward to testing and advancing delivery of the first global, mobile network with direct-to-device connectivity from our satellites in space,” said Ram Viswanathan, president and CEO of Omnispace LLC. “Ubiquitous mobile connectivity will empower consumer, enterprise, and government users worldwide — creating economic opportunity like never before.”

“The success of the Omnispace Spark program is due to an impressive team effort between Thales Alenia Space and innovative startups,” said Hervé Derrey, president and CEO of Thales Alenia Space. “We’re very proud to support Omnispace in the deployment of the first global 5G network via satellite, which will open the door for new opportunities for mobile network operators, industry and end-users.”

“Being part of the Omnispace Spark Program and working closely with all companies involved has been a tremendous experience, crowned by the two successful launches,” said Vytenis J. Buzas, founder and CEO of NanoAvionics. “NanoAvionics’ strong relationship with prime contractor Thales Alenia Space allowed us to bring our modular and cost effective nanosatellite buses to the project as well as launch support and in-orbit operations.”

“The launch of Omnispace Spark-2 marks the next step in building the universal 5G network desired by Omnispace. Our payload antennas will be used to enable a direct connection, no matter where in the world the user is, meeting our commitment to enable disruptive technologies for the benefit of all humanity,” said Nicolas Capet, ANYWAVES CEO.

“At Syrlinks all the team follows with a great interest the successive launches of the Omnispace Spark satellites, onboarding Syrlinks Radio frequency payload solution. For such IoT (Internet Of Things) satellite service, any additional satellite placed in orbit is key to enlarge this innovative service coverage and penetration. It’s a new step toward the final objective of having a multiple-satellite constellation,” said Eric Pinson, director of Space activity at Syrlinks.

5G mobile connectivity from a single global network will help transform industries and serve as the communications infrastructure to support the digital economies of the 21st century. The network will empower mobile network operators, their customers and partners to fuel innovation, power industries, and connect billions of users. Follow the launch journey and learn more at Omnispace.com.

Omnispace is redefining mobile connectivity for the 21st century. By leveraging 5G technologies, the company is combining the global footprint of a non-geostationary satellite constellation with the mobile networks of the world’s leading telecom companies to bring an interoperable “one network” connectivity to users and IoT devices anywhere on the globe.

The Israel Space Agency within the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology has presented the strategic plan for advancing the civilian space industry in Israel to the Minister, Orit Farkash-Hacohen. The plan, in a detailed manner, sets out the vision, objectives and targets as well as the activities that are required to achieve them.

The space industry throughout the world has been undergoing dramatic change in recent years, with space being opened up to private entrepreneurs and investors, so that it has become a growing and developing market. The strategic plan is introduced against the backdrop of this dramatic change.

The plan was devised at the request of Minister Orit Farkash Hacohen, who charged the Israel Space Agency to perform the strategic work of mapping the area of opportunities that are opening up for the State of Israel as a result of this dramatic change last December, and to consequently prepare a strategic plan for the development of the civilian space industry in the State of Israel.

The plan determines that the space industry can constitute a force multiplier and leverage for significant economic growth, for strengthening components of science and technology, and also for enhancing Israel’s international status. The plan contains measurable targets for the development of the Israeli space industry together with a long list of actions, for which the budgetary scale in the next five years is estimated at around NIS 600 million.

The Key Elements of the Strategic Plan for Space

The objective of the plan is to enhance the strength and independence of the State of Israel by positioning it as one of the world’s leaders in the space industry, as leverage for economic growth as part of the Israeli high-tech industry; to give a boost to science and technology; and to enhance Israel’s international status. To reach this goal, the plan defines four main objectives: (1) to strengthen and develop the civilian space industry in Israel, as a sustainable growth engine; (2) to strengthen and support scientific research in space; (3) to advance and develop the human capital that is required to further strength and growth in the space industry; (4) to enhance Israel’s international status in the field of space.

To enable the advancement of the plan, measurable targets will be set for developing the Israeli space industry. Among the targets for the coming decade are…

• Doubling the number of space companies (from 60, at the present time, to at least 120)
• Quadrupling the number of people employed in the space industry, from 2,500 to 10,000
• Quadrupling the scope of annual sales made by the space industry, from $1 to $4 billion
• Increasing the number of space researchers in the academic world, from 120 to 160 (an increase of 33%)
• Increasing the number of high school graduates who have actually been involved in the space industry, from 200 to 4,000
• Establishing international partnerships in the space industry, and increasing the Israeli presence in key multi- and international organizations

Among the activities that will be included in the plan:

• Setting up a space-based National Data Center, which will allow the integration of the use of the deliverables from space within the activities of the government and additional entities, while supporting the space industry and space research.
• Expanding the TEVEL program (“tevel” means universe in Hebrew and is also an acronym for “Students Build Satellites”), and transforming it into an international program that is connected with the IDF and with the academic world – a key tool for attracting high school students to get involved in technological professions in general, and for giving them a sense of capability regarding the space industry in particular.
• The SHALOM satellite – a commercial and scientific satellite – a joint project between the Israel Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, whose main tasks are: environmental monitoring, atmosphere, land and oceans, and precise agriculture. Its deliverables will allow the development of various applications by commercial entities, the deepening of the research in the field of remote sensing and additional technological developments.
• Facilitating access to space for Israeli entrepreneurs, through the annual launch of an Israeli satellite to LEO, for the purposes of demonstrating and proving technological capabilities.

Orit Farkash-Hacohen, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, said, “The civilian space industry is undergoing a global revolution. There is huge economic and commercial potential for the Israeli economy and for the Israeli high-tech industry. The plan that I have charged the Israel Space Agency to prepare, to advance this industry, will continue to develop the space industry in Israel in accordance with the future trends, and it will harness the extensive information and assets that Israel has in the space industry, from the defense industry, for civilian uses. Already at the present time, we can see more and more start-ups and research studies in this field, and it is our job to significantly increase their number.”

Hilla Haddad-Chmelnik, Director-General of the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, said, “We are standing at a critical point in time, when space is being transformed from the domain of governments to the domain of the private market, and this presents a huge opportunity for the State of Israel. Strategic investment in the space industry is critical for the civilian strength of the State of Israel, both from the economic aspect as well as from international aspects. This is a growing market, and the State of Israel has the ability to capture 1% of the global market share – this will bring about massive profits for the Israeli companies that are engaged in the industry, and for the State of Israel as a whole. In the strategic plan, we have chosen to focus on four aspects: the significant strengthening of the civilian space industry; state aspects of the space industry, the strengthening of space research; and the fields of education and the community, which will drive greater interest among students in the worlds of science and technology in general.”

Phase Four, the creator of the radio-frequency thruster (RF Thruster) for satellite propulsion, announced that the company has finalized a lease for an expanded manufacturing facility to support high volume production of the firm’s Maxwell engine product line for commercial and government missions.

The new site, located in Hawthorne, California, will host a manufacturing facility more than 3x the size of Phase Four’s current facility in El Segundo. The facility will also house a dedicated environmental testing facility, which will continue to reduce the company’s industry leading, sub-4 month, lead times. As part of its expansion, Phase Four will also stand up a dedicated R&D cell to support the development of higher performance thrusters and higher power propulsion systems for larger spacecraft.

Phase Four’s Maxwell Block 1 engine gained flight heritage in 2021 and is currently operating on several commercial small satellites. The company is set to begin production of its Block 2 Maxwell engine in the second quarter of 2022. Block 2 uses the company’s second generation RF Thruster and offers significant performance improvement over the Block 1 engine.

Phase Four is also working to adapt the RF Thruster to operate on nontraditional propellants that are less expensive and more readily obtained than purified noble gases like xenon and krypton. The company is currently performing thrust measurements with its Maxwell engine adapted to operate on iodine on an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) sponsored program, and recently won a Space Force Pitch Day award to test on green propellant.

“With the increased demand for our high performance Maxwell engine to support the steadily growing number of small satellite constellations, we made the decision to first focus on our manufacturing process ” said Phase Four CEO, Beau Jarvis. “We demonstrated through several production runs in 2021 that Maxwell engines can be built, tested and delivered to customers in under four months. Now with a larger, dedicated manufacturing facility we will scale up production runs to support delivery of over 100 Maxwell engines annually.”

“Our aim is to catalyze industry in space by delivering a short lead time plasma thruster, and developing a thruster that can operate on next generation propellants. Phase Four’s Hawthorne site is essential to achieving these goals. Our new facility will allow us to vertically integrate flight unit manufacturing and testing, removing key throughput limiters in our engine production line. Furthermore, the facility will allow us to disaggregate shared vacuum chambers between R&D and production, removing internal competition for resources and thereby accelerating the development of our RF thruster,” said Phase Four CTO, Umair Siddiqui. “This comes at the right time; given the supply chain insecurity of legacy plasma electric propulsion systems. Both government and commercial customers need domestic propulsion systems with short lead times to support rapid constellation deployments.”

In addition to the new facility opening, which is set for early Q4 2022, Phase Four is also gearing up for a hiring push. The Company hopes to double its employee count by the end of next year, said CEO Beau Jarvis. “We are excited to grow the Phase Four family as we begin to realize our mission of catalyzing the space industry through mass manufacturing of our Maxwell engines and the introduction of engines that enable new missions by leveraging advanced propellants.”

Phase Four is a disruptive provider of next generation electric propulsion (EP) solutions for small satellites. The company was founded in 2015 to address the demands of the rapid proliferation of satellite constellations and to accelerate the advancement of its radio-frequency thruster (RFT). The Phase Four RFT represents a revolutionary new architecture that realizes lower cost, mass-manufacturability, miniaturized power electronics, and propellant agnosticism over incumbent technologies, without compromising performance. In 2021 Phase Four’s Maxwell turn-key propulsion system achieved flight heritage and is now being regularly utilized by small satellite operators.

Terran Orbital designs, builds, and integrates satellite solutions that help solve some of the world’s most complex problems…”

Terran Orbital Corporation, a global provider of satellite solutions, primarily serving the United States aerospace and defense industry, announced the successful integration of six Terran Orbital designed and built satellites aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket prior to the Transporter-5 launch.

NASA CubeSat Proximity Operations Demonstration (CPOD)

The CPOD project is being led by Terran Orbital with funding from NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The technology demonstration mission will validate the technologies needed to support rendezvous, proximity operations, docking (RPOD), servicing, and formation flight by utilizing a pair of identical 3-unit (3U) CubeSats, leveraging their inherently lower vehicle and launch costs.

NASA Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 (PTD-3)

PTD-3 is a 6-unit (6U) CubeSat built and integrated by Terran Orbital to host and support launch and on-orbit operations of the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload funded by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program and developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL). The TBIRD mission is the second mission in the PTD series funded by the Small Spacecraft Technology program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The mission will demonstrate a space-to-ground data transfer capability at orders of magnitude faster than previously demonstrated technologies. This technology could open doors to large volume data communications and data accessibility for advanced space exploration, delivering multiple terabytes of data per day to a single ground station.

Fleet Space CENTAURI-5 

The CENTAURI-5 spacecraft is part of a constellation commissioned by Fleet Space Technologies to deliver global connectivity solutions specifically designed for the energy, exploration, and resource industries. Tyvak International, a Terran Orbital Corporation, designed and developed the spacecraft. Fleet Space is providing the payload that consists of the world’s first 3D printed all-metal patch antenna array combined with Digital Beamforming in S-Band frequency.

GeoOptics CICERO-2 Vehicle 1 and Vehicle 2

GeoOptics Vehicles 1 and 2 are the first phase of a next generation satellite constellation, CICERO-2 to form a unified Earth observatory allowing governments, industry, and individual stakeholders to monitor and prepare for the many impacts of climate change. These 6U XXL size spacecraft were designed and developed by Terran Orbital’s international arm, Tyvak International, in Torino, Italy. GeoOptics’s payload, Cion, is a best-in-class Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) system and is a miniaturized version of the NASA/JPL developed “TriG” payload.

“Terran Orbital designs, builds, and integrates satellite solutions that help solve some of the world’s most complex problems,” said Terran Orbital Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer Marc Bell. “CPOD, PTD-3, CENTAURI-5, and the CICERO-2 vehicles feature game-changing technologies that will greatly benefit the ways we measure and observe activity on Earth. Communicating this data in support of future mission capabilities will ultimately save and improve lives. We look forward to fostering our partnerships with NASA, GeoOptics, Fleet Space, MIT Lincoln Laboratories, and SpaceX as we continue to deliver groundbreaking and life-changing missions.”

...recent launches in 2022 will have doubled capacity and revisit rates, expanding HawkEye 360’s constellation to 15 satellites. This significantly boosts the constellation’s ability to serve global customer demand and to monitor activity across places such as Ukraine.

HawkEye 360 Inc., the world’s leading commercial provider of space-based radio frequency (RF) data and analytics, today announced that its Cluster 5 satellites have successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on May 25. Once Cluster 5’s on-orbit checkout is complete, the recent launches in 2022 will have doubled capacity and revisit rates, expanding HawkEye 360’s constellation to 15 satellites. This significantly boosts the constellation’s ability to serve global customer demand and to monitor activity across places such as Ukraine.

“Every enhanced satellite cluster we launch helps us deliver a higher density of valuable data to our government, commercial and humanitarian customers and partners – advancing our efforts to monitor global activities for a safer and more secure world,” said HawkEye 360 John Serafini. “Launch by launch, these space-based innovations are analyzing the known and uncovering the unknowns of the RF spectrum across the globe.”

Cluster 5 includes enhanced antenna functions introduced with Cluster 4, which allow greater flexibility in geolocating signals across a wide range of frequencies important to customers. Cluster 4 launched on April 1 has been completing checkout and moving into final formation to begin collecting data in late June. Cluster 5 is slated to achieve initial operating capability in August 2022.

These recent launches keep HawkEye 360 on track to exponentially increase the size of the constellation, with upcoming launches now scheduled every few months. HawkEye 360 will continue to grow the constellation to achieve revisit rates around 15 minutes in order to support timely defense, national security, and commercial applications.

Phase Four, the creator of the radio-frequency thruster (RF Thruster) for satellite propulsion, announced that the company has finalized a lease for an expanded manufacturing facility to support high volume production of the firm’s Maxwell engine product line for commercial and government missions.

The new site, located in Hawthorne, California, will host a manufacturing facility more than 3x the size of Phase Four’s current facility in El Segundo. The facility will also house a dedicated environmental testing facility, which will continue to reduce the company’s industry leading, sub-4 month, lead times. As part of its expansion, Phase Four will also stand up a dedicated R&D cell to support the development of higher performance thrusters and higher power propulsion systems for larger spacecraft.

Phase Four’s Maxwell Block 1 engine gained flight heritage in 2021 and is currently operating on several commercial small satellites. The company is set to begin production of its Block 2 Maxwell engine in the second quarter of 2022. Block 2 uses the company’s second generation RF Thruster and offers significant performance improvement over the Block 1 engine.

Phase Four is also working to adapt the RF Thruster to operate on nontraditional propellants that are less expensive and more readily obtained than purified noble gases like xenon and krypton. The company is currently performing thrust measurements with its Maxwell engine adapted to operate on iodine on an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) sponsored program, and recently won a Space Force Pitch Day award to test on green propellant.

“With the increased demand for our high performance Maxwell engine to support the steadily growing number of small satellite constellations, we made the decision to first focus on our manufacturing process ” said Phase Four CEO, Beau Jarvis. “We demonstrated through several production runs in 2021 that Maxwell engines can be built, tested and delivered to customers in under four months. Now with a larger, dedicated manufacturing facility we will scale up production runs to support delivery of over 100 Maxwell engines annually.”

“Our aim is to catalyze industry in space by delivering a short lead time plasma thruster, and developing a thruster that can operate on next generation propellants. Phase Four’s Hawthorne site is essential to achieving these goals. Our new facility will allow us to vertically integrate flight unit manufacturing and testing, removing key throughput limiters in our engine production line. Furthermore, the facility will allow us to disaggregate shared vacuum chambers between R&D and production, removing internal competition for resources and thereby accelerating the development of our RF thruster,” said Phase Four CTO, Umair Siddiqui. “This comes at the right time; given the supply chain insecurity of legacy plasma electric propulsion systems. Both government and commercial customers need domestic propulsion systems with short lead times to support rapid constellation deployments.”

In addition to the new facility opening, which is set for early Q4 2022, Phase Four is also gearing up for a hiring push. The Company hopes to double its employee count by the end of next year, said CEO Beau Jarvis. “We are excited to grow the Phase Four family as we begin to realize our mission of catalyzing the space industry through mass manufacturing of our Maxwell engines and the introduction of engines that enable new missions by leveraging advanced propellants.”

Phase Four is a disruptive provider of next generation electric propulsion (EP) solutions for small satellites. The company was founded in 2015 to address the demands of the rapid proliferation of satellite constellations and to accelerate the advancement of its radio-frequency thruster (RFT). The Phase Four RFT represents a revolutionary new architecture that realizes lower cost, mass-manufacturability, miniaturized power electronics, and propellant agnosticism over incumbent technologies, without compromising performance. In 2021 Phase Four’s Maxwell turn-key propulsion system achieved flight heritage and is now being regularly utilized by small satellite operators.

Fleet Space launches its latest Centauri 5 satellite using the Space X Falcon 9 launch vehicle, making this Fleet’s 7th satellite on-orbit. This LEO satellite was produced using 3D printing technology and adds capacity, reduces signal delay and provides additional network redundancy in the existing Centauri smallsat constellation.

This was the company’s third launch with SpaceX, following the successful deployment of Centauri 4 on the Transporter-2 mission in June 2021.

Centauri 5 will be placed in LEO at an expected altitude of some 530 km. (330 miles). A 6U sized smallsat with a total weight of 12kg., this smallsat will add capacity, reduce latency and provide additional network redundancy in the existing six-strong Centauri constellation, which Fleet operates in collaboration with Tyvak International.

Upgrades to the Centauri 4 payload include enhancements that mitigate the effects of radiation in LEO, direct communication links to Fleet’s ground station as well as an extended S-band range, allowing uplink at standard, ground station frequencies.

Digital beamforming provides extra gain, increasing the data rate and also allows the S-band frequency channels to be reused on the different beams. This combination increases by 2x the satellite’s data capacity. In a world first, the all-metal patch antennas are all entirely 3D printed.

The advances in 3D printing technology used in the construction of its patch antenna also feed into the development of the forthcoming, fully 3D printed, micro Alpha constellation, scheduled for launch during 2023. Together, the two systems will provide continuous coverage, data rates up to 520 kbps and tailored frequency bands servicing current and future generations of IoT devices.

The combined constellation also enables Fleet Space’s ExoSphere system. This is transforming mineral exploration by using ambient noise tomography to locate critical resources up to 100 times faster and with far less environmental impact than conventional methods such as explosives, vibroseis machines and drilling.

The Centauri 5 launch further strengthens Fleet Space’s position in the vanguard of the burgeoning Australian space technology industry, which the federal government predicts will be worth $12 billion and create an additional 20,000 jobs by 2030.

“This latest launch will see us put our pioneering Centauri micro satellite into low-earth orbit. It’s both a landmark technical achievement, and another significant milestone on our journey, which has seen us grow from promising start-up to a world-leading space technology company in just four years. We’ve built our business and reputation by consistently delivering on our stated goals, and developing technologies that address real human and commercial needs reliably and cost-effectively. Centauri 5 will bring important new capabilities to our existing constellation. It also supports the development of our forthcoming Alpha constellation, which enables our pioneering ExoSphere mineral exploration tool with transformational benefits for the exploration of critical energy transition materials. We’re delighted to be working in collaboration with Space X on this launch, a move that marks a major expansion of our presence in the US and strengthens Australia’s position as a genuine global player in the space industry,” said Flavia Tata Nardini, CEO and Founder, Fleet Space Technologies

Fleet Space Technologies is Australia’s leading space company. It operates from a state-of-the-art HQ in Adelaide, South Australia, a region rapidly emerging as a global centre of excellence in space and advanced aerospace technologies. The company has designed, built and launched the country’s only commercial Satellites and has six satellites already in orbit as it works towards a mission towards building a constellation of 140 small satellites in Low Earth Orbit.

Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) (“Momentus” or the “Company”) has launched their first demonstration flight of the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) to LEO aboard the SpaceX Transporter-5 mission. Momentus also announced that it has placed its first customer satellite in orbit and plans to conduct more deployments of customer payloads in the coming days.

The versatile Vigoride spacecraft, designed to support a range of transportation and in-space infrastructure services, is slated to perform a series of operations in space to test and demonstrate the performance of the vehicle and its subsystems. Under the company’s license from the Federal Communications Commission, the mission is scheduled to last up to 180 days. The mission will also feature the deployment of several customer satellites and the testing of hardware for another customer.

A key part of the Vigoride vehicle is the Microwave Electrothermal Thruster (MET) that uses water as a propellant. The MET produces thrust by expelling extremely hot gases through a rocket nozzle. However, unlike a conventional chemical rocket engine, which creates heat through a chemical reaction, the MET heats propellant using solar microwave energy. Using the MET offers cost-effective, efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly propulsion to meet the demands for in-space transportation and infrastructure services.

On this first flight, Momentus welcomes FOSSA Systems and Orbit NTNU among its customers. FOSSA is deploying multiple smallsats as part of a constellation to provide global and real-time Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity for industrial applications. Orbit NTNU will be using its payload, SelfieSat, to take a selfie from a satellite in space (the payload has an external screen, displaying pictures sent up by the public while a camera mounted on an arm photographs the screen with the Earth in the background.)

In addition to Vigoride, Momentus used a second port on the Falcon 9 to fly a third-party deployer from a trusted partner. Momentus used this deployer to place its first customer satellite from Bronco Space at the California State Polytechnic University at Pomona on-orbit. Four other satellite payloads that are customers of the deployer system partner were also placed into orbit.

“Today’s launch was the culmination of months of work to conduct an extensive ground test campaign, ready the spacecraft, and obtain the necessary government licenses and approvals for our first flight of the Vigoride vehicle,” said Momentus Chief Executive Officer, John Rood. “We’re excited to see our vision of providing transportation and space infrastructure services and being an early provider of these key services to the growing new space economy starting to be realized. MET technology has been researched in academia since the 1980s, but we’re pioneers in bringing it to market. Testing the MET on this first Vigoride flight is one of the important tasks that we plan to conduct as we continue to refine and improve its performance. Our journey to space was only made possible by our team’s dedication, focus, and considerable talent. I’m proud of how Momentus employees responded to the many challenges we faced. It would have been easy to believe that our initial challenges were insurmountable, but the fact that Momentus didn’t quit speaks to an emerging culture that will be the true foundation of our success over time.”

Momentus is a U.S. commercial space company that plans to offer in-space infrastructure services, including in-space transportation, hosted payloads and in-orbit services. Momentus believes it can make new ways of operating in space possible with its planned in-space transfer and service vehicles that will be powered by an innovative water plasma-based propulsion system that is under development.

On Wednesday, May 25th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Transporter-5 mission to LEO from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The 57 minute launch window opened at 2:35 p.m., ET, or 18:35 UTC. The Falcon 9 flew along Florida’s eastern coast over the ocean and may have been visible from the ground.

Falcon 9’s first stage booster previously launched Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, one Starlink mission, and the Transporter-4 mission. After stage separation, the Falcon 9’s 1st stage returned to Earth and landed squarely on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Transporter-5 is SpaceX’s fifth dedicated, smallsat, rideshare mission. On this flight are 59 spacecraft, including cubesats, microsats, non-deploying hosted payloads, and orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs).

All imagery is courtesy of SpaceX.

In the company’s fifth rideshare mission with SpaceX and 16th mission in total, Exolaunch, a global provider of launch, in-space logistics and deployment services, completed the firm’s most demanding integration, with more than 1500 kg. of payload mass across 20+ satellites for the firm’s international customers from 11 countries and three continents.

Exolaunch’s customer satellites weighing 100+ kg. and cubesats, ranging up to 16U in size, will fly on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle on the SpaceX Transporter-5 mission scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Following the successful debut flight of the Exolaunch’s novel CarboNIX 8-inch separation system for smallsats on the recent Transporter-4 mission, this launch marks the premiere for EXOpod Nova, the company’s latest technology for optimized, cubesat deployment.

Nova’s first launch will proudly fly multiple satellites for Spire Global and its customers via a Multi-Launch Agreement between the companies. Nova increases the allowable satellite mass by up to 30 percent and the available side panel volume by a factor of four, when compared to traditional cubesat deployers. It also enables smallsat manufacturers to keep launch costs low while building larger, heavier and more capable cubesats. Exolaunch aims to further use the EXOpod Nova on its Reliant orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) next year to provide launch flexibility to cubesat constellations.

Nova joins the suite of Exolaunch’s reliable and cost-effective solutions to launch and deploy smallsats and is becoming the preferred and most flexible deployment technology for the existing cubesat constellations. The company’s customers can deploy their satellites into space by fully relying on Exolaunch’s separation systems, including CarboNIX, EXOpod, and now, EXOpod Nova.

Transporter-5 will launch Exolaunch’s new and returning customers, including Spire Global, Satellogic, ICEYE, NanoAvionics, Omnispace, Thales Alenia Space, Satlantis, EnduroSat, Plan-S, Spacemanic, Aalto University and Space Products and Innovation. The customers’ payloads will enable space application technologies, such as Optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) observation, Maritime Surveillance and IoT communications.

“Exolaunch is proud to launch on Transporter-5, as it marks our biggest mission to date and pays homage to the commitment and dedication we make our customers with the launch of their state-of-the-art technology,” said Jeanne Allarie, VP Launch, Exolaunch. “The trust and recognition we’ve gained from the industry through each launch are not possible without our incredible work with SpaceX. Together, our teams’ technical grit and creativity take our shared customers to new horizons and heights.“

This mission is the fifth Transporter in a series of rideshare launches Exolaunch manifests on Falcon 9 under a Multi-Launch Agreement with SpaceX. For each Falcon 9 launch procured, Exolaunch provides a turnkey solution encompassing comprehensive rideshare mission management, satellite integration, environmental testing and deployment services.

Exolaunch has deployed more than 100 smallsats on SpaceX’s first four rideshare Transporter missions.

Exolaunch (Germany, USA) is a global leader in rideshare launch, deployment, in-space logistics, and integration services for the NewSpace industry. With a decade of flight heritage and 210 satellites launched across 15 missions on launch vehicles around the world, Exolaunch has an industry insight it can leverage to develop one-stop-shop solutions tailored towards meeting customer needs and addressing market trends. Exolaunch executes launch contracts for NewSpace leaders, the world’s most innovative startups, research institutions, government organizations, and space agencies. Exolaunch manufactures lightweight and flight-proven separation systems to deliver integration and deployment services for small satellites. The company is also developing a line of environmentally-friendly orbital transfer vehicles named Reliant for the satellite last-mile transportation, in-space logistics and space debris removal. Exolaunch is committed to making space accessible for everyone and to promoting safe, sustainable and responsible use of space.