{"id":47758,"date":"2026-01-09T20:30:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T12:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/twilight-rideshare-mission-deploys-the-first-tranche-of-keplers-optical-network\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T20:30:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T12:30:03","slug":"twilight-rideshare-mission-deploys-the-first-tranche-of-keplers-optical-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/twilight-rideshare-mission-deploys-the-first-tranche-of-keplers-optical-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Twilight Rideshare Mission Deploys the First Tranche of Kepler\u2019s Optical Network"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><strong>SpaceX<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cTwilight\u201d rideshare mission on Sunday deployed the first tranche of <strong>Kepler Communications<\/strong>\u2019 next-generation optical satellite constellation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Twilight mission launched on a Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 11 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, taking off at 5:44 a.m. PT. The mission launched to dusk-dawn Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO). There were 40 payloads on the flight.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For Kepler, the mission launched ten 300 kg-class satellites, each equipped with a minimum of four optical terminals. Kepler\u2019s network is designed to provide real-time connectivity, on-orbit compute, and hosted payload services for government and commercial customers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Kepler describes its network as similar to the terrestrial internet in space by \u201cdynamically routing data between satellites to provide resilient, real-time connectivity between space and Earth.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Canadian space startup previously launched pathfinder satellites, which have demonstrated space-to-space, space-to-ground, and space-to-air optical relay in a variety of demonstrations with partners.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis launch brings a new paradigm to space applications,\u201d said Mina Mitry, Kepler CEO and co-founder. \u201cOur optical relay satellites make it possible for users to rapidly deploy their missions with a real-time, connected, cloud environment, fundamentally changing how data flows on orbit and what space systems can achieve for people and planet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kepler confirmed post-launch the mission was successful and the satellites will now enter the commissioning phase.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The mission also launched satellites for a number of other customers including two Acadia satellites for Capella Space, two satellites for Tomorrow.io, one satellite for Umbra, and one satellite for Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL).&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Exolaunch deployed 22 satellites on the mission. The company manifested two satellites for Iceye, Cluster 13 of three satellites for HawkEye 360, and the Flamingo-1 satellite for Vyoma. Its other customers included Spire Global, Turkish company Plan-S, Dcubed, and Aistech Space.<\/p>\n<p>The mission also launched NASA\u2019s Pandora mission, a small satellite designed to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. NASA also funded BlackCAT and SPARCS, two spacecraft onboard the mission.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p><em>This story was updated on Jan. 11 after the launch<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX\u2019s \u201cTwilight\u201d rideshare mission on Sunday deployed the first tranche of Kepler Communications\u2019 next-generation optical satellite constellation.&nbsp; The Twilight mission launched on a Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 11 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, taking off at 5:44 a.m. PT. The mission launched to dusk-dawn Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO). There were 40 payloads on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}