{"id":355276,"date":"2026-03-30T14:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/355276\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T14:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:09:08","slug":"transporter-16-sends-119-payloads-to-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/355276\/","title":{"rendered":"Transporter-16 Sends 119 Payloads to Orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest cargo train to orbit has left the station. SpaceX\u2019s Transporter-16 mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base this morning, bringing 119 payloads to orbit on the company\u2019s first rideshare mission of 2026.<\/p>\n

More information will trickle out over the coming hours and days as payloads begin operations, but here\u2019s what we know about the manifest so far:<\/p>\n

Eyes in the skies: Many of the satellites and payloads on board T-16 are joining growing EO constellations, including:<\/p>\n

Eight sats from OHB Italia will add to the company\u2019s IRIDE EO constellation;Six SAR sats from ICEYE, including dedicated satellites for undisclosed customers;Two Satellogic Newsat Mark-V high-res EO sats;Two EO sats built by AAC Clyde Space;One sat from UK-based SatVu, carrying the company\u2019s mid-wave infrared EO payload to monitor heat-signatures;One Satlantis EO sat designed for submeter resolution.<\/p>\n

Seein\u2019 ain\u2019t believin\u2019: The future isn\u2019t all visual, however, and T-16 is also bringing up a pool of sats focused on RF sensing, with many payloads aiming to provide better situational awareness over the oceans.<\/p>\n

Spire Global launched eight sats to track maritime, aviation and weather activity from orbit;Sierra Nevada Corporation launched three sats aimed at detecting dark vessels and GPS jammers from LEO;Unseenlabs launched its 20th sat focused on maritime domain awareness;The Norwegian Space Agency and Norway-based SFL Missions Inc. flew one sat to expand the country\u2019s maritime situational awareness network.<\/p>\n

Can you hear me now? Communications technologies on orbit are rapidly advancing, and the launch brought a handful of payloads pushing the technological envelope on comms.<\/p>\n

The Hellenic Space Agency launched three sats to advance laser comms: PeakSat and ERMIS-3\u2014both flying an Atlas-1 terminal from Astrolight\u2014and OptiSat, flying a TESAT SCOT20 laser comms terminal;\u00a0Japanese startup ArkEdge Space launched a demo to test maritime communications;Taiwanese startup Tron Future Tech sent its second cubesat to orbit to demonstrate broadband comms capabilities;A consortium of Romanian institutions sent up one sat to demonstrate secure space-to-ground communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Piggybacking: As with past Transporter rideshares, many of the payloads onboard are catching a secondary ride through the growing pool of orbital transfer vehicles and reentry spacecraft. These missions include:<\/p>\n

Momentus\u2019 Vigoride-7 satellite, which is carrying 10 hosted payloads, demonstrating RPO operations, robotic in-space assembly hardware, as well as advanced comms and in-orbit computing tech.Exotrail\u2019s Spacevan-002, which is carrying multiple payloads and satellites testing tech for atomic timing, deployable solar panels, in-orbit mobility, advanced robotics, and optical space links.K2 Space\u2019s two-ton Gravitas satellite, equipped with a 20 kW electric thruster, which is hosting 12 undisclosed payloads from multiple customers, including the DoD.D-Orbit\u2019s latest ION satellite, which will deploy four satellites in orbit, and host three payload demonstrations.Varda latest reentry vehicle, W-6.<\/p>\n

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First movers: The fundraise highlights not only the overwhelming demand among investors to fund orbital-data-center ventures, but also Starcloud\u2019s unique position as a data-center startup with flight heritage.<\/p>\n

Keep reading<\/a><\/p>\n

Load More<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest cargo train to orbit has left the station. SpaceX\u2019s Transporter-16 mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-355276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}