SpaceX launched a space-facing rideshare today (Aug. 16).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Transporter 11 group of satellites flew to orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:56 p.m. EDT (1856 GMT; 11:56 a.m. local time.)
The first stage of Falcon 9 alighted upon a drone ship posted just off the coast of California roughly eight minutes after liftoff, as seen in the broadcast on X, formerly Twitter. SpaceX is expected to confirm the payload deployments later today.
Related: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 2 Maxar satellites on record-tying 20th flight (video)
Transporter 11 includes a range of payloads from different companies. One of the payloads, for example, is an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX chip. The chip is a noted artificial intelligence and edge computing graphics processing unit (GPU).
The 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 Transporter 11 will be the first time it shields real hardware during a space mission.
SpaceX has already launched four other missions in the past week, with two of those efforts devoted to sending more satellites into space for the Starlink megaconstellation.
The Transporter 11 launch is SpaceX’s 80th of 2024, with more than 70% of the satellites devoted for Starlink.
This article was updated at 1:10 p.m. EDT with a slightly adjusted launch time published by SpaceX on its website, and again just following the successful launch.
