{"id":389005,"date":"2026-07-07T09:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T09:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/389005\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T09:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T09:23:11","slug":"spacex-launches-81-satellites-to-orbit-from-california-lands-rocket-on-ship-at-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/389005\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX launches 81 satellites to orbit from California, lands rocket on ship at sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX launched a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7).<\/p>\n

A Falcon 9<\/a> rocket carrying 81 payloads lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a> on Tuesday at 3:12 a.m. EDT (0712 GMT; 12:12 a.m. local California time), kicking off a mission SpaceX called Transporter-17.<\/p>\n

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As that name suggests, Transporter-17 was the 17th flight of SpaceX<\/a>‘s Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched four missions to date<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 20 Transporter and Bandwagon missions that flew before Transporter-17 sent more than 1,800 payloads to Earth orbit. Transporter-1 lofted 143 of those back in January 2021<\/a>, which remains the global single-launch record.<\/p>\n

The 81 payloads that went up on Transporter-17 included “cubesats<\/a>, microsats, hosted payloads and orbital transfer vehicles carrying eight of those payloads to be deployed at a later time,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest satellite riding the Falcon 9 on Tuesday was CAS500-4, a South Korean Earth-observation craft that tips the scales at about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms).<\/p>\n

The satellite, whose name is short for “Compact Advanced Satellite 500-4,” is the fourth member of a planned five-satellite CAS500 fleet<\/a> in low Earth orbit<\/a> (LEO). CAS500-4 will help the South Korean government monitor crops and forests<\/a>, among other tasks.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

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\"a\n<\/p>\n

The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on the deck of a drone ship shortly after launching the Transporter-17 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 7, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

The first stage of the Transporter-17 Falcon 9 landed about 8.5 minutes after launch on the SpaceX droneship “Of Course I Still Love You,” which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 11th flight for this particular booster, according to the company’s Transporter-17 mission description.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 81 payloads to LEO, where they’ll be deployed starting about 50.5 minutes after launch. CAS500-4 won’t be released until nearly 2.5 hours after liftoff.<\/p>\n

Transporter-17 was the 79th Falcon 9 launch of 2026. Nearly 80% of this year’s missions have been devoted to building out Starlink<\/a>, SpaceX’s giant broadband constellation in LEO.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 3:25 a.m. ET on July 7 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX launched a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-389005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}