On Tuesday, January 14 SpaceX will launch the Transporter-12 rideshare mission from launch complex SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, deploying more than 100 satellites into orbit. The launch vehicle’s booster will return to land at Vandenberg. The 27-minute launch window opens at 11:09 AM PST (19:09 UTC). If needed there is a backup launch opportunity the next day with the same window.
Deployment of payloads from the second stage to Sun-synchronous orbits (SSO) at altitudes of approximately 510-520 km and 590-600 km will begin almost an hour after launch. There will be 101 payload separation events from Falcon 9, three of which are orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) carrying at least 14 more satellites for later deployment. The total number of payloads on the flight including those on the OTVs is 131, which may include hosted payloads.
The booster used for this flight is B1088-2, which previously launched NROL-126 at the end of November. After stage separation, the booster will return to land on LZ-4 at Vandenberg. Support ship Loren C will recover the payload fairing halves downrange in the Pacific Ocean.
The second stage will conduct two burns to reach the first deployment orbit, with 79 payloads separating from 54 to 82 minutes after launch. After a 20-minute coast phase, the second stage will conduct another very short burn to raise its perigee, followed by a 34-minute coast and another short burn to raise the vehicle’s perigee. Deployment of the second set of 22 payloads will occur from 137 to 144 minutes into the mission. This will be followed by one more relight of the second stage to put it on a deorbit trajectory.
NORSAT-4, built by University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) for Norway, has a low light imaging payload to help detect ships during the Arctic winter. (Credit: SFL)
This will be the seventh Falcon mission of the year for SpaceX. The next flight will launch two lunar landers for Firefly and ispace from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15. The next SpaceX rideshares are Transporter-13 to SSO, Bandwagon-3 to mid-inclination, and a flight including NASA’s TRACERS spacecraft to SSO, all currently expected in the March to April timeframe.
Mission Overview
This will be SpaceX’s12th dedicated rideshare mission to SSO. Its payloads range in size from picosatellites of less than a kilogram that are only a few centimeters on a side, to a satellite massing three-quarters of a tonne.
Rideshare integrators handling payloads on this flight include Exolaunch, ISILaunch, SEOPS, Maverick Space, D-Orbit, and Impulse Space. While most of the payloads will be released directly from the launch vehicle, there are Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs) from D-Orbit and Impulse Space which will later release more spacecraft. D-Orbit is also supporting some payloads separating directly from the launch vehicle.
SEOPS recently announced the purchase of a Falcon 9 launch in 2026 for a dedicated rideshare to GTO. Maverick and ISISpace will collaborate on booking customers for the flight.
Below is a summary of the payloads that we are aware of on the flight. Sizes for CubeSats are given in terms of 10 cm cubes, with a 6U CubeSat being approximately 30 x 20 x 10 cm. Sizes for PocketQubes are given in terms of 5 cm cubes, with a 1.5P PocketQube being approximately 7.5 x 5 x 5 cm.
MBZ-Sat Credit: MBRSC
Atop the payload stack will be MBZ-SAT, a high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite developed by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the United Arab Emirates. It has a mass of 750 kg and deployed dimensions of 3 x 5 m.
UAE also provided some smaller educational satellites for this launch. HCT-Sat 1 from Higher Colleges of Technology in association with MBRSC is a 1U spacecraft that includes an imaging payload. The National Space Science and Technology Center at UAE University has AlAinSat-1, a 3U spacecraft with remote sensing payloads developed in association with Spain’s Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Japan’s Kyushu Institute of Technology, and Indonesia’s Telkom University.
Italy’s D-Orbit has a pair of its ION OTVs, named Amazing Antonius and Eminent Emmanuel. These will carry multiple hosted payloads and customer satellites for later deployment, including seven PocketQubes manifested by Alba Orbital.
Impulse Space has its LEO Express 2 mission, the second flight of its Mira orbital transfer vehicle with a mass of 294 kg at launch. Mira will host several space situational awareness camera systems from Starfish Space, HEO Robotics, and Impulse. This vehicle has an upgraded communications system to enable longer mission duration. While Impulse’s first Mira vehicle was declared to be past the active phase of its mission in mid-2024 due to degraded communications, orbital tracking data shows it performed a series of maneuvers starting in mid-December and continuing into January.
Riding on board the Impulse OTV are two satellites that will be deployed about a week after launch. South Korea’s TelePIX has BlueBon, a 6U-XL CubeSat with medium-resolution imaging and AI processing onboard to monitor “Blue Carbon”, based on detecting algae in marine ecosystems. Spanish firm FOSSA Systems has FOSSASat TAT-0, a 3U CubeSat that is a new form factor for the company after earlier launches of PocketQubes and flat satellites.
FOSSA also has two more spacecraft on the flight, FOSSASat TAT-A & TAT-E. One or more of these will host an encrypted IoT payload for WISeKey.
SAT GUS from Mark Rober and CrunchLabs is a microsatellite built by Tyvak that will allow users to upload photos for display on a phone integrated into the satellite. When the satellite passes over the user’s location it will take an image of the user’s picture on the phone display with their location on Earth in the background.
The spacecraft for Varda’s second mission. Credit: Rocket Lab
Varda’s Winnebago-2 is its second Rocket Lab-built satellite with a reentry capsule. Varda is working on manufacturing pharmaceuticals in microgravity conditions, with its first flight demonstrating production of the drug ritonavir. After Varda’s first mission faced a lengthy wait on orbit for landing permission from the FAA and the Utah Test and Training Range, this second mission has the necessary paperwork in hand to land at a new site, Australia’s Koonibba Test Range. The capsule also carries a payload for the Air Force Research Lab to collect reentry data during its descent.
Another company, Inversion Space, also has a reentry capsule demonstration on this flight. The 63 kg Ray 1 spacecraft will put its capsule on a reentry trajectory for a landing off the coast of California.
Centauri 7 & 8 are a pair of 12U satellites from Australia’s Fleet Space with IoT and narrowband communications functionality. Turkish firm Plan-S has four more 6U CubeSats for its Connecta IoT constellation, after launching four of the spacecraft on Transporter 11. EchoStar Global provided a 74 kg spacecraft for IoT communications called Lyra-1.
India’s XDLINX Space Labs has Elevation-1, a 6U spacecraft with an E-band communications payload. Germany’s Reflex Aerospace has a 109 kg microsatellite named SIGI for customer Media Broadcast Satellite.
Spire has six LEMUR spacecraft on the flight. Three of the 3U LEMUR 2 satellites will have radio occultation and AIS maritime tracking payloads. Two of the satellites will have IoT payloads for Myriota.
Earth Observation Satellites
As is usual on Transporter missions, there are a wide variety of Earth observation satellites on board.
Planet has Pelican-2, the second in its new line of high-resolution imaging microsatellites, the first of which was launched on Transporter 9. Planet also has 36 more of its 3U SuperDoves, Flock 4G, to refresh its constellation of medium-resolution multi-spectral imaging spacecraft.
Satellogic has NewSat-45/UzmaSAT-1, a high-resolution earth observation satellite built for Malaysia’s Uzma.
Norway has the 35 kg satellite NORSAT-4. Like the earlier NORSAT spacecraft, this has an AIS ship tracking payload and, additionally, a low-light imager to detect ships greater than 30m long in dark Arctic waters.
The first three satellites for the Fireflies imaging constellation. Credit: Pixxel
Pixxel has the first three satellites in its Fireflies constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites. These 52 kg spacecraft capture more than 150 spectral bands at 5 m resolution with a 40 km swath width.
TRL Space from the Czech Republic has TROLL, a 6UXL spacecraft with a hyperspectral imager from Simera Sense. French firm Absolut Sensing has GESat GEN1, a 16U spacecraft to monitor methane emissions. Bulgaria’s Endurosat has Balkan-1, a 16U CubeSat with a 1.5 m-resolution multispectral imager and onboard AI image processing, the first of a constellation supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union. Pakistan has PAUSAT-1, a 16U collaboration between Pakistan Air University and Türkiye’s ITU SSDTL with a hyperspectral imaging payload.
Argotec has IRIDE-MS2-HEO-1 for its HEO (Hawk for Earth Observation) constellation, which is part of Italy’s IRIDE Earth observation constellation. The HEO satellites have optical imaging payloads with onboard image processing.
Spain’s Satlantis has GARAI A, the first of a pair of 115 kg satellites with two camera systems for visible and infrared (VNIR/SWIR) imaging. SkyBee-1 is the first microsatellite for Constellr’s HiVE constellation. These satellites will take high-precision land surface temperature readings to help monitor water stress for agriculture. Germany’s OroraTech has Forest-3, an 8U CubeSat with a thermal imaging payload for wildfire detection.
ICEYE has four of its 90 kg synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. These include another satellite for their customer Space42 of the United Arab Emirates.
Unseen Labs adds BRO-16 to their RF sensing constellation used for maritime monitoring. Recent BRO satellites have been 8U CubeSats.
JAY-C/-D1/-D2 manifested by UTIAS Space Flight Laboratory appears to be the Gray Jay constellation built by SFL for Defence Research and Development Canada. This is a trio of 30 kg microsatellites with multiple sensors that will fly in formation to detect and identify surface and airborne targets in Canada’s Arctic region.
AAC Clyde Space has Sedna-2, a 4U satellite with an AIS payload for maritime monitoring. Portugal’s LusoSpace has PoSat-2, a CubeSat with AIS payload for maritime monitoring.
Orbital parameters for the ANSER Follower-1 satellite over the last year. Variations in the rate of descent over the last several months have brought it to slightly above the expected deployment altitude of its new Leader launching on Transporter 12. Credit: CelesTrak
The ANSER mission from Spain’s INTA and ESA to monitor water quality and climate change, consisting of a trio of formation-flying 3U CubeSats with a Leader and two Followers, launched on a Vega rocket in October 2023 with the Leader failing to deploy. The two Follower satellites have since been drifting down from 570 km towards their science orbit at 500 km, using differential drag to control their rate of descent. They will try to rendezvous with a new Leader-S satellite launching on Transporter 12.
Digantara and OrbAstro have SCOT, a 6U CubeSat hosting Digantara’s Space Climate and Object Tracker sensor to monitor space debris and space weather. Danish firm Space Inventor has EDISON IOD, and 8U CubeSat to demonstrate payloads including laser communications and electric propulsion.
Germany’s Technische Universität Berlin and The Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg have INNOcube, a 3U spacecraft testing technologies such as internal wireless communications that replace cabling, as well as a structural battery system. NOVI has its Low-latency Intelligence and Monitoring Experiment (LIME) spacecraft, a 3U CubeSat that will conduct demonstrations including the use of machine learning algorithms for monitoring spacecraft health, and mapping the availability of Iridium Short Burst Data communications while varying the spacecraft’s antenna orientation.
IRIS-F2 and IRIS-F3 are a pair of 3U academic demonstration satellites from Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and SATORO Space. PARUS-T1 is a Taiwanese 3U CubeSat from National Formosa University with amateur radio payloads. PARUS-T1A from the same organization was lost in the failed launch of Space One’s KAIROS vehicle from Japan in December.
The Naval Postgraduate School in collaboration with New Zealand’s Defence Science & Technology has a CubeSat called Otter that will test communications payloads.
Care Weather has Fledgling Veery Barb, a 1U CubeSat demonstrating a miniature radar payload. NASA Ames has TechEdSat-22, a 1U demonstration mission.
Seven PocketQube satellites are packed into the two Albapod deployers on the flight.
Spain’s Hydra Space Systems has two 1.5P satellites. HADES-R has an amateur radio FM repeater operated by AMSAT-EA as well as an experimental graphene radiator payload. HYDRA-T has a software-defined radio (SDR) based FM and FSK repeater payload.
AGH University of Science and Technology has Poland’s first PocketQube, the 1P HYPE AGH with several demonstration payloads. The University of Luxembourg has POQUITO, a 1P demonstration satellite that will test LED communications with a captive chipsat payload, as well as having an amateur radio beacon. PROMETHEUS-1 is a 1P demonstration from Portugal’s University of Minho and University of Lisbon along with Carnegie Mellon University.
Hello Space, from Türkiye, has SkyLink-1 & 2, a pair of 3P satellites for IoT.
FGN-100-D1 is a demonstration of a 100 kg-class microsatellite from Turkish firm Fergani Space. AE1c, AE1d, and FUSION-1 may belong to Japan’s BD Space. Other satellites aboard include BUZZZER-1 and SATURNIN-1. K2 Space, a California startup aiming to build very large satellites at low costs, is expected to have a demonstration mission to test some of its satellite components.
Payload information for the flight will be updated as more information becomes available. Some companies do not provide information before the launch.
Notes on previous SpaceX rideshare missions.
Bandwagon-2: Launched December 21, tracking data for these payloads is just starting to become available. Twenty-nine objects are associated with the launch, with orbit data given for 28 of those. The orbit of South Korea’s KORSAT-2 military reconnaissance satellite is not publicly shown. Aside from KORSAT-2, the objects have not been named yet on Space-Track or Celestrak. SpaceX said 30 payloads would be on the flight.
(Lead Image: Falcon 9 at SLC-4E before SDA Tranche 0 Flight 1 launch. Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)
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