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<\/p>\nOn Saturday, Dec. 21st, SpaceX launched the Bandwagon-2 rideshare mission from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff occurred as scheduled at 3:34 AM PST (11:34 UTC).<\/p>\n
This flight carried 30 payloads for a variety of customers, including a synthetic aperture radar satellite for South Korea. The spacecraft were carried into a 45-degree inclination, with deployments in circular orbits at around 510 and 570 kilometers in altitude.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SpaceX had switched coasts for Bandwagon-2 after launching the first Bandwagon flight in April from Florida. The Transporter rideshare missions to polar orbits were also moved to Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) after flying six missions from Florida. The 45-degree orbit that Bandwagon-2 targeted had an unusually low inclination for a launch from Vandenberg, although SpaceX has previously flown Starlink missions from the site going to orbits inclined as little as 43 degrees.<\/p>\n
The Falcon 9 booster used for this flight was B1071-21, which previously flew NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, Transporter-8, Transporter-9, NROL-146, and 13 Starlink missions. SpaceX support ship GO Beyond recovered the payload fairing halves from downrange in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
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Launch of the previous Bandwagon mission, Bandwagon-1, in April 2024 (Credit: Julia Bergeron for NSF)<\/p>\n
For this mission, the booster\u2019s main engines cut off at T+2 minutes, 15 seconds. At this point in the flight Falcon 9\u2019s first and second stages separated before the booster flipped around to perform a boostback burn that put it on a trajectory back to Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4), adjacent to its launch pad at VSFB. As expected, the booster landed successfully at T+8 minutes, 15 seconds.<\/p>\n
The second stage of the launch vehicle performed several burns to release most of the payloads at 510 km, then the South Korean satellite at 570 km in altitude, before deorbiting.<\/p>\n
Bandwagon-2 was SpaceX\u2019s 130th Falcon mission of 2024, with six more scheduled for the remainder of December. After having a slower third quarter with only 27 launches, this is already the 38th in the fourth quarter of the year. The next SpaceX flight is expected to carry Astranis satellites early Sunday morning from SLC-40 in Florida after that mission scrubbed on Saturday\u2019s first attempt. The next rideshare flight will be Transporter 12 in January to Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).<\/p>\n
Space Shuttle (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n Mission Overview<\/p>\n Bandwagon-2 was SpaceX\u2019s second dedicated rideshare flight to a mid-inclination orbit, which keeps the satellites over more highly populated areas of the planet rather than providing the full global coverage of near-polar orbits targeted by Transporter missions. The first four Bandwagon missions are expected to each carry a South Korean earth observation satellite at the top of the payload stack.<\/p>\n As with the Transporter flights, payload integration companies handle many of the satellites going onto the stack. For this flight, Exolaunch was supporting 15 CubeSats and 7 larger microsatellites. (CubeSat sizes are typically given in terms of 10 cm cubes, with a 6U CubeSat being approximately 30 x 20 x 10 cm.) Maverick Space is also involved, while Arrow Science and Technology had a 16U CubeSat deployer on board, although no details of its contents had been announced prior to launch.<\/p>\n Render of SAR satellite for 425 Project. (Credit: Thales Alenia Space)<\/p>\n In December 2023, SpaceX launched the first of five satellites for South Korea\u2019s 425 Project, a constellation of military Earth observation satellites. While that first satellite, which was declared operational in August, had an optical imaging payload, the remaining four use synthetic aperture radar (SAR). These radar satellites are able to obtain images in darkness or through clouds, complementing the abilities of optical imaging spacecraft.<\/p>\n Thales Alenia Space announced in December 2018 that it had signed two contracts with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) and Hansha Systems Corporation to develop high-resolution SAR satellites for Korea\u2019s Agency for Defence Development. Thales Alenia is providing the radar-imaging payloads and elements of the system for pointing the spacecraft. The SAR payload uses a deployable 5-meter antenna.<\/p>\n Bandwagon-2 carried the second of the 425 Project SAR satellites. This follows the program\u2019s first SAR satellite, which was deployed during Bandwagon-1 earlier this year, with the next of these satellites expected to be aboard Bandwagon-3.<\/p>\n Other expected payloads<\/p>\n Other payloads aboard the Bandwagon-2 mission included the X47 and X49 satellites, each with a mass around 90 kg, to expand ICEYE\u2019s SAR imaging constellation, joining those launched on previous rideshares. ICEYE recently announced a new funding round that brought its total amount raised in 2024 to $158 million.<\/p>\n HawkEye 360 satellites use a variety of antennas to monitor different frequency ranges. Credit: Hawkeye 360<\/p>\n Hawkeye 360 had Cluster-11, a trio of microsatellites each with a mass of 30 kg, aboard the rocket. These will fly in formation to locate the source of radio-frequency (RF) transmissions on Earth. Tomorrow.io had Tomorrow-S3 and S4 aboard, a pair of 6U CubeSats with microwave sounder payloads to collect weather data.<\/p>\n Sidus Space was launching its second mission, LizzieSat-2, which has a mass of approximately 100 kg. This spacecraft hosts instruments such as imagers and edge computing, including HEO\u2019s Holmes-004 imager that will be used to observe other objects in orbit.<\/p>\n True Anomaly\u2019s 275-kg Jackal 3\/TAANSAAFL-002 mission will demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) and non-Earth imaging (NEI) functions. True Anomaly\u2019s first pair of satellites, launched on Transporter 10 in March, failed shortly after deployment.<\/p>\n GITAI had SC1, a 16U CubeSat, which will test a new spacecraft bus and instrument suite. SC1 with deploy a tethered target and then observe it with cameras, LiDAR, and a laser rangefinder, processing the data with visual recognition software.<\/p>\n Think Orbital\u2019s Flight-2 will conduct a demonstration of electron beam welding, cutting, and x-ray inspection on a piece of metal, then transmit the resulting data back to Earth and shut down within about a day of launch. This is the company\u2019s first free-flying orbital mission, using a 39-kg satellite, following up on an earlier demonstrator that stayed attached to a Falcon 9 first stage.<\/p>\n Xplore\u2019s 6U CubeSat XCUBE-1 (6U) is the first mission for its operator, carrying a hyperspectral imager. Djibouti\u2019s second satellite, DJIBOUTI-B, is a 1U CubeSat with an Internet of Things (IoT) communications payload to gather data from climatological stations in the country.<\/p>\n Space Telecommunications Inc. (STI) had an 8U CubeSat, CTC-0, aboard which will test direct-to-device communications and blockchain technologies. CroCube, a 1U CubeSat, is a demonstration mission with a camera and a microcontroller payload and will be Croatia\u2019s first CubeSat mission.<\/p>\n LASARSat. Credit: Karel Hor\u00e1k<\/p>\n LASARSat, also a 1U CubeSat, is a Czech mission that includes sensors for detecting how much energy reaches the satellite from a laser passing through Earth\u2019s atmosphere, as well as reflectors to aid in tracking.<\/p>\n Pleiades-Orpheus, a CubeSat from the Irvington High School Girls in STEM Club! using the 1U platform developed by Cal-Poly Pomona, had an amateur radio payload.<\/p>\n Mongolia\u2019s ONDO Space had ONDOSAT-OWL-3 through 12, ten more of their 0.5U CubeSats for IoT communications.<\/p>\n More payload information will be added as it becomes available.<\/p>\n Notes on previous SpaceX rideshare missions<\/p>\n Transporter-11: 113 objects are being tracked from this launch, with 12 of those still unidentified on Celestrak. Based on the expected payloads those 12 could be CAKRA-1, GNA-3, one of the Doves from Planet, and the nine PICo-IoT satellites.<\/p>\n Bandwagon-1: All 11 expected objects are tracked and identified.<\/p>\n Transporter-10: 51 objects are being tracked from this launch, with 13 of those still unidentified on Space-Track.<\/p>\n SSO-A: Launched in December 2018, this rideshare organized by Spaceflight Inc. left two sizeable pieces of the payload stack in orbit. While the Upper Free Flyer is still at an altitude of approximately 560 x 540 km, the Lower Free Flyer reentered Earth\u2019s atmosphere in early December. The Transporter-1 payload adapter is also still in orbit at 480 x 470 km. Later flights kept the rideshare stack attached to the second stage.<\/p>\n (Lead image: The Bandwagon-2 payload stack in orbit. Credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday, Dec. 21st, SpaceX launched the Bandwagon-2 rideshare mission from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff occurred as scheduled at 3:34 AM PST (11:34 UTC). This flight carried 30 payloads for a variety of customers, including a synthetic aperture radar satellite for South Korea. 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