- Customer: Astro Digital’s undisclosed customer
- Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9
- Launch Location: Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
- Destination: After deployment from the Falcon 9, Sherpa-LTC2 will transport the payload from 310km circular orbit to a 1,000km orbit
- Total spacecraft: 1
The mission lifted off at 10:09 ET on September 4 from Cape Canaveral carrying 51 Starlink satellites and Spaceflight’s Sherpa-LTC2 orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) with its customer payload onboard. The high-thrust propulsive Sherpa was deployed successfully from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 about an hour later. It made contact upon first pass, and continues to execute its commissioning processes.
The OTV will ultimately target a 310-kilometer circular orbit before igniting and transporting an undisclosed customer payload, booked through Astro Digital, to a 1,000-kilometer circular orbit.
Sherpa-LTC features a bi-propellant, green propulsion subsystem utilizing Benchmark Space Systems’ new Polaris propulsion technology. The revolutionary OTV provides a low-cost, rapid orbital transfer for many sizes of small spacecraft. Spaceflight’s customer and technology partner on this mission, Astro Digital, designed and manufactured the payload launching on Sherpa-LTC, and provided the command and control system known as Makalu, for the Sherpa OTV.
