Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the Transporter 8 launch. An ocean view with noise though
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 - Transporter 8
Written: June 13, 2023
On a southbound Cruise Ship
SpaceX conducted its 40th launch of 2023 with the Transporter 8 rideshare mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Station.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket at 14:35 PDT on Monday, 21:35:00 UTC June 12, 2023. Falcon 9’s first stage B1071-9 returned to land at Landing Zone-4 approximately seven and a half minutes after launch.
This was the eighth dedicated rideshare mission organized by SpaceX and carried 72 payloads into a sun-synchronous orbit — some of which will be deployed later from two independent space tugs that are on the mission.
The payloads range in size from picosatellites of less than a kilogram — measuring only five centimeters on each side — to microsatellites massing around 300 kg.
The Transporter missions are intended to provide a consistent cadence of rideshare opportunities to popular orbits such as Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO). As with many other satellite missions in 2023, the Transporter 8 launch date slipped from its original June 12, 2023 target, ending up on June 12, 2023.
There is only one more Transporter mission scheduled for 2023, launching in the fourth quarter of this year.
B1071-9 will have made its ninth flight after launching its next mission:
The second stage of the vehicle featured a new shorter variant of the nozzle extension on the MVac engine. This new nozzle extension is optimized for cost and manufacturability at the expense of thrust and specific impulse efficiency and will be used on missions where Falcon 9’s full performance is not needed.
The second stage performed three burns throughout this mission. The first two brought the vehicle to a nearly circular orbit around 540 km in altitude and a 97.6-degree inclination to deploy most of the payloads starting about an hour after launch. The third burn will deorbit the second stage.
2nd stage flight path
Following stage separation, the second stage’s Merlin Vacuum engine ignited, beginning the six minute long burn toward an initial parking orbit.
While the payload mass or destination orbit usually don’t prevents the first stage from preserving the energy needed for a boostback burn, Transporter missions are relatively light and target a single orbit, abling a “Return to Launch Site” (RTLS) flight profile and cancel the need for downrange drone ship recovery.
Notam: Transporter 8’s flightpath with the expected fairing splashdown area 551 km downrange
Three Merlin engines lit for 29 seconds to perform the ‘entry burn’, protecting the booster from the aerodynamic stresses and chock bow plasma burns caused by the atmospheric reentry. This time a short triple engine burn was used to land B1071-9 on LZ-4. It was the 199th successful landing overall of a Falcon rocket.
Second stage burned for 5 minutes 59 seconds to insert itself into its transfer orbit. This initial orbit measured 207 km x 537 km.
After that the second stage coasted for 57 minutes before Second Engine Start (SES-2) for 2 seconds, entering its orbit of 537 x 540 km at an inclination of 97.4 degrees. Starting at T+00:59:59 minutes, the rest of the payloads began deploying. The deployment sequence then lasted for 16 minutes 22 seconds.
B1071-9 didn’t perform a static fire test after refurbishment while waiting for a west coast launch out of Vandenberg. SpaceX has omitted this safety precaution several times so far. It is not required to perform a static fire test inhouse missions like Starlink, that will save money and time before the launch.
SpaceX is the first entity ever that recovers and reflies its fairings. After being jettisoned, the two fairing halves will use cold gas thrusters to orientate themselves as they descend through the atmosphere. Once at a lower altitude, they will deploy drogue chutes and parafoils to help them glide down to a soft landing for recovery.
Falcon fairings halfs have been recovered and reused since 2019. Improved design changes and overall refurbishment procedures have decreased the effects of water landings and led to an increased recovery rate of fairings.
The active fairing has four pushrods to separate itself from the passive fairing. They are also air conditioned with Nitrox - A gas mixture of Oxygen - Nitrogen gasses known by deep sea divers is pumped into the fairing to prevent humid air from entering, corroding and damaging the payload.
Fairings have evenly spaced venting ports that have been redesigned a number of times by having first ten, then eight and now having their venting ports built as close pairs along the fairing edge. This prevents saltwater from the ocean from flooding and sinking the fairing, and makes refurbishment toward the next flight easier.
The Transporter 8 Payload
SpaceX will launch 72 satellites into two Sun-Synchronous Orbits. These satellites are either directly attached to ports on the five ESPA rings A, B, C, D and E or indirectly to base plates with dispensers attached to them. The 24 inch - 15 inch ports on ESPA ring A - E are secured to the Payload Adaptor Fitting on top of the 2nd stage.
SpaceX plateholder E has six 15 inch ports E1 - E6
SpaceX plateholder D has six 15 inch ports D1 - D6
ESPA ring C has four 24 inch ports C1 - C4
ESPA ring B has four 24 inch ports B1 - B4
ESPA ring A has four 24 inch ports A1 - A4
ESPA ring A mounted directly on the payload adapter cone is holding four Darpa Black Jack Aces satellites. From there it gets complicated with regard to what sits where.
Based on this NSF payload photo it looks like that there are five ESPA rings A - E.
While some Transporter customers deal directly with SpaceX to get a ride for their spacecraft, most of the payloads are handled by launch integrators who buy ports on the payload stack and then assemble multiple customers into that space.
The payloads will then either deploy directly from the sub contractors satellite ring adapter or from a separable CubeSat deployer or in this case two ‘space tug’ that will release its payloads at a later time — possibly after shifting and adjusting to another orbit.
On this flight, the launch integrators with ports on the payload stack include Exolaunch, handling 32 CubeSats and microsatellites on Transporter 8. Exolaunch is a German-based launch service and separation system provider for smallsat payloads.
Old graphic by ExoLaunch Inc. show their capability to mount and deploy many types of payloads
Mounted on the CarboNIX separation ring, a microsatellite will be released and deployed for their customer. The EXOpod CubeSat deployer will carry four to six CubeSats. The quad EXOpods mounted on a porthole extension plate can deploy 1-4 CubeSats.
The EXOport porthole - 24 inch to 15 inch - reducer plate, Exolaunch will deploy a number of ‘Toolbox’ sized 12U to 24U CubeSats even up to four minisatellites from 15 inch ports.
Maverick Space Systems will be handling at least 6 satellites. Alba Orbital will also be handling six PocketQube satellites.
Launcher (now part of the Vast company) is flying its second space tug, Orbiter SN3, carrying four satellites and several hosted payloads.
The hosted payloads on SN3 include Nightingale 1 for Cesium Astro — a Ka-band communications system, Remora for Millenium Space Systems — a guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) system, and a CubeSat deployer demonstration for TRL11.
One of the satellites on SN3 is the 38 kg Otter Pup from Starfish Space, which will demonstrate rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (RPOD) technologies during its mission, including docking back with Orbiter SN3 after its initial release.
D-Orbit has the ION-SCV011 “Savvy Simon” orbital transfer vehicle, which is carrying multiple small satellites on board for later deployment. Alba Orbital’s satellites are on board the D-Orbit vehicle.
Varda Space Industries, a new company focused on in-space manufacturing, is launching W-Series 1. This spacecraft has a Rocket Lab Photon satellite bus hosting a small manufacturing module and reentry capsule. This first mission will focus on small molecule formation in microgravity. The reentry capsule will land in Utah at the end of the mission with the produced material onboard. Varda also has a contract with the Air Force to evaluate using their capsules as a hypersonic testbed during reentry.
Orbital Sidekick is back with the GHOSt 3 satellite for their hyperspectral imaging constellation, after launching GHOSt-1 and -2. The first two spacecraft in its constellation of high-resolution hyperspectral imaging satellites, GHOSt 1 & 2, with 8 m resolution and 500 spectral bands. The imaging technology has been tested in orbit with earlier payloads on the International Space Station and the smaller Aurora satellite that was launched on Transporter-2.
The GHOSt microsatellites are approximately 90 kg each. Moving to a larger bus than the earlier Aurora satellite enabled using larger telescopes, as well as giving more power and higher throughput Ka-band radios. Onboard image processing using Nvidia hardware enables them to pick out data points of interest to reduce the data download.
Currently, Orbital Sidekick’s commercial business is largely in the energy industry, where the company supports seven of the top 10 pipeline operators in North America with services such as pipeline leak detection.
Orbital Sidekick has contracts with government customers such as NRO. Transporter-8 and Transporter-9 will each carry another pair of GHOSt satellites. This will fill Orbital Sidekick’s current authorization for six satellites, which will be expanded to 14.
Argentinian firm Satellogic continues to increase its constellation to 34 active satellites with four more on this flight. NewSat Mark V spacecraft (or ÑuSat) 40-43 will have 1 m resolution multispectral imaging and 25 m hyperspectral imaging.
British Sat Vu has the HOTSAT-1 thermal imaging microsatellite, which features a 3.5 m resolution mid-wave infrared imager with video capability.
Runner-1 is a 90 kg optical sub-meter resolution earth observation satellite made by Terran Orbital and ImageSat International for use by the Chilean government, which calls it FASat-Delta. Runner-1 can collect multi-spectral imaging and color video.
Spire has three 6U spacecraft on board, with one hosting the FOREST-2 thermal imaging payload for OroraTech. Two other Spire LEMUR satellites have AIS/ ADS-B/ GNSS-RO/ RF sensors. Spire’s own constellation of 6U Cubesats, which has GPS radio occultation (RO) functionality for gathering weather data, AIS for tracking maritime traffic, and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) for tracking aircraft.
Turion Space has the 32 kg DROID.001 spacecraft with a space situational awareness imaging payload, based on a 42U satellite bus from NanoAvionics.
Spain’s Satlantis has the 16U GEI-SAT Precursor with visible to near-infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) imaging, intended to identify methane emissions.
Wyvern has another 6U spacecraft built by AAC Clyde Space for multispectral imaging.
India’s Azista BST Aerospace (ABA) is flying the 80 kg ABA First Runner satellite with panchromatic and multispectral optical imaging.
Muon Space has the 59 kg MuSat-1, primarily intended to demonstrate their avionics suite.
Gregoire is a demonstration mission from Belgium’s Aerospace Lab.
Alba Orbital has UNICORN-2I, a 3P satellite to monitor artificial light at night.
iQPS has the QPS-SAR-6 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellite, also called AMATERU-III. This will be the third satellite in their constellation.
The QPS-SAR-3 and QPS-SAR-4 satellites were lost when a Japanese Epsilon launch vehicle failed to reach orbit in October 2022. iQPS was also listed as one of the more significant creditors in the bankruptcy filing of the now-defunct Virgin Orbit, as they had already paid $5 million towards the launch of QPS-SAR-5 that was planned for this year.
ICEYE has four more of their X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites on the top E ring aboard Transporter 8.
Skykraft returns with their Block-3 launch of five satellites, after launching Block-2 on Transporter-6. These satellites are joined into a single unit for launch and then will separate from each other after they are released from the launch vehicle. Skykraft’s spacecraft are used to track aircraft and to extend air traffic control communications over a wider area by using satellites to augment the terrestrial communications network. They are conducting tests with aviation authorities in Australia and New Zealand.
There are multiple spacecraft focusing on Internet of Things (IoT) communications. OQ Technologies is adding Tiger-4, a 6U spacecraft, to their constellation.
SpaceX subsidiary Swarm is adding a dozen new 0.25U SpaceBEEs to their constellation.
FOSSA is launching several of their new FEROX spacecraft.
Turkey’s Hello Space has the 1P Istanbul with an IoT payload.
Argentina’s Innova Space has two MDQSAT-1C & -1D picosatellites on board.
There are several demonstration craft for the Department of Defense on the flight.
Viasat’s XVI is a 12U satellite for the Air Force Research Lab that will demonstrate satellite communications using the military Link-16 tactical communications network.
The US Special Operations Command has two Modular Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (MISR) experimental CubeSats.
DARPA has its first four Blackjack Aces satellites mounted on the A ring. These satellites will demonstrate the use of optical satellite links and on-orbit data processing for autonomous operations. Lockheed integrated the payloads onto the satellites and is handling launch preparations.
The Blackjack Aces satellite buses are from Blue Canyon (Raytheon), the four optical terminals on each spacecraft are provided by SA Photonics (CACI), and the “Pit Boss” data processing units are from SEAKR (Raytheon).
Tomorrow.io is back with Tomorrow-R2 after launching Tomorrow-R1 on the last Transporter mission. The 85 kg microsatellite host a weather radar payload primarily monitoring precipitation.
The University of Stuttgart is launching EIVE (Exploratory In-Orbit Verification of an E/W-Band Satellite Communication Link), a 6U spacecraft to demonstrate high-frequency communications in the 71-76 gigahertz range.
Outpost Technologies Corporation has their Mission 0, a 3U spacecraft to demonstrate their new satellite bus. It might also be listed as Mission 1.
URESAT-1 is a 1.5P spacecraft with an amateur radio payload from Spain’s URE and AMSAT-EA. MRC-100 from the Technical University of Budapest in Hungary, part of its “SMOG” series, is a 3P satellite for monitoring “electromagnetic pollution” generated by human activity on Earth. International Computing High School of Bucharest in Romania has the 1P satellite ROM-2 with an amateur radio payload and a two-megapixel camera. Ariel University has the 2P Satlla-2I educational spacecraft for testing concepts of free space optical communications.
Pleiades-Squared is a 1U demonstration CubeSat from Cal Poly Pomona’s Bronco Space.
Colombia’s Platzi has the PlatziSat1 PocketQube, manufactured by FOSSA.
The 3U SpeiSat from the Italian Space Agency has a tiny “nanobook” of a prayer reading by Pope Francis and amateur radio transmissions of messages of hope.
Deployment schedule of Transporter 8
After the 2nd stage engine first cut-off the deployment begins in this order. This list is written with following sources: Everyday Astronaut on launch order, NasaSpaceFlight on payloads, EOportal on some details and Günters Space Page with even finer details starting with the bigger satellites.
A camera mount is placed between row 1 and 4 in the photo of the payloads.
A little about CubeSats
CubeSats are built within standard measurements of 10x10x10 centimeters as a 1U unit with lots of solar cells on the outside and various instruments on the inside. Planet of San Francisco’s SuperDove is a 3U CubeSat, sized as a ‘Loaf of bread’. The next size is the ‘Shoebox’ 6U which is two 3U built side by side or a ‘French Flüte’ with 6U on a row. A 12U CubeSat is a ‘Toolbox’ measuring 20x20x30 centimeters and fills a quad pack dispenser.
A PocketQube is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that usually has a size of 5cm cubed per unit or 'p' (one eighth the volume of a CubeSat). This technology paves the way to ‘democratizing access to space’ as the small form factor removes significant economic barriers to orbit for smaller organizations. It looks like a ‘Rubik's Cube’.
There is a smaller size, the 1/4U CubeSat, which is like a ‘Slice of bread’. SpaceBEE from Swarm Technologies, Inc. is an example of this size.
Some callouts are based on quad cubesat deployers located on a dispenser plate mounted on an ESPA ring port “A1-4, B1-4 and C1-6” plus at the top rim of ESPA ring C as port C7, where the heaviest Turkish satellite has been mounted.
From the 2nd stage top bulkhead there is attached a 12 foot fairing mounting ring onto which the Payload Adaptor Fitting is mounted; it tapers into where the ESPA rings are mounted. On the ESPA rings there are 4 to 6 portholes depending on their size, from where Microsats and plates can be attached, the plates are attachment points for smaller rings with CubeSat dispensers in all sizes from 1/8U to 36U.
Terran Orbital Corporation have here mounted 5 CubeSats dispensers mounted on a plate attached to one of four 24 inch portholes in the ESPA D ring. The CubeSats dispensers each will open a lid from which a 6U CubeSat will deploy, CPOD will deploy two 3U CubeSat and two Cicero-2 will each deploy a larger 6U XXL CubeSat. The power wires go to the locks on the lids on the CubeSat dispensers - note the hinges on the lids edges.
The CPOD, PTD-3, CENTAURI-5, and two CICERO-2 payloads from Terran Orbital Corporation. They were all 6U ‘shoebox’ CubeSats mounted on a plate fixed to a 24 inch port hole on the ESPA ring
All of them have a name and are made by a company, a college school, a university or a government office. There are space companies like Exolauch Inc. who collect a bunch of CubeSat and give their own spin on all these links of the chain between 2nd stage and deployment. Therefore it’s a puzzle that is very difficult to put together.
Just how many hours do I use to write this payload list? 18 hours.
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