Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the Transporter 10 launch. Still a clear day with sunscreen
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 - Transporter 10
Written: March 4, 2023
Polar Express Share Riders
SpaceX conducted its 21st launch of 2024 with the Transporter 10 rideshare mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Station.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Monday March 4, 2024 at 14:05 PST — 22:05:00 UTC. Falcon 9’s first stage B1081-5 returned to shore at Landing Zone-4 approximately seven and a half minutes after launch.
This was the tenth dedicated rideshare mission organized by SpaceX and carried 53 payloads into a sun-synchronous orbit — More payloads will be deployed later from two independent space tugs that are on Transporter 10.
The payloads range in size from picosatellites of less than a kilogram — measuring only five centimeters on each side — to larger 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 2024, the Transporter 10 launch date slipped from its original January 2024 target, ending up on March 4, 2024.
B1081-5 will have made its fifth flight after launching its next mission:
The second stage of the vehicle featured the 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 five burns throughout this mission. The first two brought the vehicle to a nearly circular orbit around 515 km in altitude and a 97.45 degree inclination to deploy most of the payloads starting 53 minutes after launch.
The next two burns increased the circular orbit 590 km in altitude and with a 97.8 degree inclination to deploy the remaining payloads starting two and a half hour after launch.
The fifth burn will after 5-6 hours deorbit the second stage in the Pacific Ocean.
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 10’s flightpath with the expected fairing splashdown site 551 km downrange
The Merlin engine lit for 17 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 engine burn was used to land B1081-5 on LZ-4. It was the 280th successful booster landing overall of a Falcon rocket.
Second stage burned for 5 minutes 59 seconds to insert itself into its low Earth orbit. This initial orbit measured 207 km x 517 km.
After that the second stage coasted for 42 minutes before Second Engine Start (SES-2) for 4 seconds, entering its orbit of 515 x 516 km at an inclination of 97.45 degrees. Starting at T+00:53:44 minutes, the rest of the payloads began deploying. The deployment sequence then lasted for 24 minutes 49 seconds.
B1081-5 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, which 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 on 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 9 Payload
SpaceX will deploy 53 payloads consisting of 51 cubesats, microsatellites and two space tugs, all to be launched into two Sun-Synchronous Orbits.
In this SpaceX photo we have one six sided ground floor and three floors on a four sided tower
These satellites are directly attached to the central tower mounted directly on the payload adapter cone. The first tower ‘floor’ A is a flat six sided section upon which the next four flat sided ‘floors’ B, C and D are mounted. The payloads are either directly attached to ports or plates mounted onto this four sided tower in the center of the fairing.
Attachment points on each tower wall are provided, eliminating the previously ESPA rings with four to six 24 inch - six to eight 15 inch ports on the individual type of ESPA ring.
The tower wall will change the payload positions to floors or levels on side A1-6, B1-4, C1-4 and D1-4 with the top position as the cake tier. CubeSat dispensers can now be directly mounted to the tower walls, and microsatellites can be attached to a 15-24 inch portring mounted on the tower walls. Only the floor and side numbers are changeable.
The square tower holding the satellites is mounted directly on the payload adapter cone. From there it gets complicated with regard to what sits where.
While some Transporter 10 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 three ‘space tug’ that will release its payloads at a later time — possibly after shifting and adjusting to another orbit.
Transporter 10 launch integrators include Exolaunch, who will deploy 28 CubeSats of all sizes up to microsatellites on Transporter 10. 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 15 inch CarboNIX separation ring, a large microsatellite can be deployed for the customer. The EXOpod CubeSat deployer is built to deploy a 3U CubeSat, but can be filled with smaller CubeSats from 1/4U ‘12 pieces’ to 1.5U ‘two pieces’.
Quad EXOpods mounted on a porthole extension plate can deploy CubeSats ranging from four 3U CubeSats, two 6U CubeSats to one 12U CubeSat.
The EXOport porthole reducer - 24 inch to 15 inch - plate, can deploy a number of ‘Toolbox’ sized 12U to 24U CubeSats even up to four minisatellites from 15 inch ports.
Exolaunch will facilitate the deployment of the following CubeSats and microsatellites:
AEROS/M-H1 (3U CubeSat, CEiiA, Thales Edisoft Consortium, Portugal)
Nothing known besides this
Rose, Fifi, Loulou and Riri (4x 100 kg microsatellites) Aerospace in Belgium
Nothing known besides this
BRO-12 & 13 (2x 6U CubeSats) UnseenLabs
The two BRO 6U CubeSats are maritime surveillance satellites. They will identify ships, their geolocation and the characterization of any given vessel type.
ContecSat-1/Oreum (16U CubeSat, Contec)
Nothing known besides this
HORACIO (16U CubeSat, Satlantis, 600 km)
Nothing known besides this
Hubble-1/2 (LEMUR 2) (2x 16U CubeSats, Spire for Hubble Network)
Nothing known besides this
Spire ADS-B & Myriota IoT (LEMUR 2) (2x 3U CubeSats, built by Spire)
Nothing known besides this
ICEYE (3 x 90/150kg X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites)
The ICEYE microsatellite spacecrafts 36, 37, 38 with a SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument is built and developed by the commercial Earth Observation (EO) company ICEYE Ltd. of Espoo, Finland.
ICEYE SAR microsatellites, each with a wet/dry mass of 85/150 kg, are side-looking X-band SAR sensors utilizing active phased array antenna steerable technology. It is both right- and left-looking and capable of acquiring satellite imagery of Earth using stripmap, spotlight and ScanSAR imaging modes.
IOD-6 Hammer (6U CubeSat, Open Cosmos, UK)
Nothing known besides this
IRIS-F1(3U CubeSat, SATORO/Space NCKU, Taiwan)
Nothing known besides this
MuSat-2 (67.4 kg microsatellite, Muon Space)
The MuSat satellites are demonstration spacecraft with two primary goals. The first goal is to demonstrate and validate the on-orbit performance of Muon Space’s in-house avionics suite. The second goal is to provide validation and early commercial data from GNSS occultation and reflectometry payloads as well additional payloads that will be hosted on the spacecraft.
NuSat 44 (microsatellite, Satellogic)
Nothing known besides this
OrbAstro-TR2 (6U, OrbAstro, UK)
Nothing known besides this
ONDOSAT-OWL-1 (2x .5U, ONDO Space, Mongolia)
Nothing known besides this
ONDOSAT-OWL-2 (2x .5U, ONDO Space, Mongolia)
Nothing known besides this
SONATE-2 (6U+, Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg, Germany)
Nothing known besides this
Veery-0E (1U, Care Weather)
Nothing known besides this
YAM-6 (90 kg microsatellite, Loft Orbital)
Nothing known besides this
Optimus-2 OTV (270kg Space Tug, Space Machines)
Nothing known besides this
SEOPS will facilitate the deployment of the following CubeSats:
LACE-A, LACE-B (CBAS-LCE) (2x 6U, NIWC/MDA, US)
Nothing known besides this
M3 (3U, Missouri University of Science & Technology) (0984-EX-CN-2023)
Nothing known besides this
PYXIS (145 kg microsatellite, Axelspace, Japan)
Nothing known besides this
Sentry/Scout-1 (6U, Quantum Space)
Nothing known besides this
Tiger-7/Tiger-8 (2x 6U, OQ Technology)
Tiger-7/8 are built by the Danish company Space Inventors
Maveric will facilitate the deployment of the following CubeSats:
GHOSt-4/GHOSt-5 (2x 90 kg microsatellites, Orbital Sidekick)
Nothing known besides this
PE2-SV1/Tyvak-0261 (Pony Express 2) (12U, Tyvak/Lockheed Martin)
Nothing known besides this
PE2-SV2/Tyvak-0262 (Pony Express 2) (12U, Tyvak/Lockheed Martin)
Nothing known besides this
PY4-1, PY4-2, PY4-3, PY4-4 (4x 1.5U, NASA)
Nothing known besides this
RROCI-2 (18 kg 12U, Orion Space)
Nothing known besides this
SpaceX will facilitate the deployment of the following microsatellites:
Aries demo sat (200 kg microsatellite, Apex, multiple hosted payloads)
Nothing known besides this
Jackal 1 (275 kg microsatellite, True Anomaly)
Nothing known besides this
Jackal 2 (275 kg microsatellite, True Anomaly)
Nothing known besides this
LizzieSat-1 (~100 kg microsatellite, Sidus Space)
Nothing known besides this
Meson-1/Quark-LITE (118 kg microsatellite, Atomos Nuclear and Space)
Nothing known besides this
Gluon-1 (73 kg microsatellite, attached to Meson-1, Atomos Nuclear and Space)
Nothing known besides this
MethaneSat (366 kg microsatellite, Environmental Defense Fund)
Nothing known besides this
Tower 5 (85 kg microsatellite, Lynk Global)
Nothing known besides this
Tower 6 (85 kg microsatellite, Lynk Global)
Nothing known besides this
Deployment schedule of Transporter 9
After the 2nd stage engine first cut-off the deployment begins in this order. This list is written with following sources: NasaSpaceFlight on payloads, EOportal on some details and Günters Space Page with even finer details starting with the bigger satellites.
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.
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