Mission At-A-Glance
- Customers: Satellogic, Planet, Swarm Technologies, Maxar
- Launch Vehicle: Arianespace Vega
- Launch Location: Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana
- Orbit: 500km
- Total spacecraft: 28
Spaceflight Inc. provided mission management and rideshare integration services for four organizations on Arianespace’s first dedicated rideshare mission on its Vega launch vehicle. The proof of concept rideshare mission, VV16, successfully launched 53 microsatellites, nanosatellites and cubesats, including 28 payloads from Spaceflight customers Satellogic, Planet, Swarm Technologies, and a microsat manufactured by Maxar.
Launched from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, Vega-1 represents Spaceflight’s first mission aboard the Vega.
This historic rideshare mission to Sun Synchronous low-Earth Orbit of 500km aboard the Vega transported Spaceflight customer spacecraft including:
- NewSat-6, a low Earth orbit remote sensing satellite designed and manufactured in South America by Satellogic, a vertically integrated geospatial analytics company that is building the first Earth observation platform with the ability to remap the entire planet at both high-frequency and high-resolution. This is Satellogic’s 11th spacecraft in orbit, equipped with multispectral and hyperspectral imaging capabilities and it will be added to the company’s growing satellite constellation.
- Planet’s 14 next-generation SuperDove satellites (Flock 4v), which will join its constellation of 150 Earth-imaging spacecraft.
- Swarm Technologies’ 12 (.25U) satellites which provide affordable global connectivity.
- A Maxar-manufactured microsat
You can find more information from the launch overview coverage in Spaceflight Now.