Mission At-A-Glance:
- Customers: UNC-Wilmington, NovaWurks, Ghalam, Helios Wire / Sirion Global, Astrocast, Honeywell Aerospace, HawkEye 360, Nevada Museum of Art, Fleet Space Technologies, Audacy, Capella Space Corporation, and many others
- Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9
- Launch Location: Vandenberg Air Force Base, California
- Orbit: Sun Synchronous
- Total spacecraft: 64
Spaceflight’s SSO-A: SmallSat Express mission, was the largest single rideshare mission from a U.S.-based launch vehicle to date. The company successfully launched 64 spacecraft to sun-synchronous low Earth orbit via a SpaceX Falcon 9 that launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Spaceflight launched 15 MicroSats and 49 CubeSats from government and commercial entities including universities, startups, and even a middle school. The payloads varied from technology demonstrations and imaging satellites to educational research endeavors.
To accommodate the large number of payloads, Spaceflight built an integrated payload stack that was nearly 20 feet tall. Once the launch vehicle reached orbit, the upper and lower free flyers separated from the vehicle. The free flyers then successfully deployed all spacecraft, dispensing one payload every five minutes over five hours.