A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 119 satellites and experimental payloads lifted off from California early Monday morning, marking both a massive smallsat deployment and another milestone in booster reusability.
SpaceX’s Transporter-16 mission departed Vandenberg Space Force Base at 4:02 a.m. Pacific Time on March 30, delivering its cargo to sun-synchronous low Earth orbit.
The launch occurred exactly nine years after SpaceX’s first successful landing and reuse of an orbital rocket booster, a historical symmetry not lost on space industry observers.
The first stage booster supporting this flight, designated B1093, completed its 12th launch and landing approximately eight minutes after liftoff. It touched down on the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You” stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
This particular booster previously launched two missions for the Space Development Agency plus nine batches of Starlink satellites.
Transporter missions have become SpaceX’s workhorse for deploying small satellites at reduced costs through shared rides. The company’s Rideshare program has now sent more than 1,600 payloads to orbit since its inception.
Monday’s manifest included cubesats, microsatellites, hosted payloads, orbital transfer vehicles, and Varda Space’s sixth reentry capsule designed for returning manufactured materials from orbit.
The largest single spacecraft aboard was Gravitas from K2 Space, a demonstration satellite producing 20 kilowatts of power for testing technologies needed by future orbital data centers.
K2 Space recently secured $250 million in funding to scale production of its large satellite platforms, including units destined for operator SES.
Other notable passengers included three Vindlér radiofrequency-intelligence spacecraft built by Muon Space for Sierra Nevada Corporation, plus orbital transfer vehicles from D‑Orbit and Exotrail that will deploy additional payloads in coming weeks.
SpaceX confirmed all deployments from the rocket’s upper stage were completed within two and a half hours of launch. The company operates a second rideshare series called Bandwagon alongside its Transporter missions.
