SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying a Google AI pathfinder satellite and 129 other payloads from California on Thursday during the second leg of a planned spaceflight tripleheader.
The Transporter-18 mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 2:32 p.m. EDT, climbing through the fog that typically blankets the coastal launch site.
Google Launches Project Suncatcher Pathfinder on Falcon 9
Serving as the most prominent cargo on the Transporter-18 rideshare is an initial test satellite for Project Suncatcher, the AI constellation that Google plans to build and operate in low Earth orbit. Future designs of Google’s satellites will carry dozens of TPU chips while orbiting the Earth in clusters.
To maintain the bandwidth necessary to process AI, these satellites will communicate using lasers. Google plans to test this work in 2027 by putting two satellites in orbit. The current pathfinder mission will evaluate how tensor processing units (TPUs) — Google chips that are core Suncatcher hardware — withstand space radiation and how efficiently the heat they generate is dissipated in the space environment.
Cowboy Space and Starfish Space Deploy New Orbit Hardware
Google is not the only company with AI data center ambitions in orbit. Cowboy Space flew its Reason-1 satellite on the same Falcon 9 rocket to prove out power beaming using high-power lasers to transfer energy from low Earth orbit to a receiver on the ground.
Cowboy Space noted in its public statements that mastering optical systems between orbit and Earth is where that journey begins toward building data centers in space. Also riding on the Falcon 9 was Starfish Space, which launched its first Otter servicing satellite to put its satellite servicing vehicles to work for customers in orbit.
“We’ve spent years developing, iterating, and proving out the key technologies required for affordable, available satellite servicing. Now we’re launching Otters, putting our satellite servicing vehicles to work for customers in orbit.”
Starfish Space, via X
Vandenberg Landing Produces Sonic Booms Across Central Coast
Following stage separation, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster returned to Vandenberg’s Landing Zone 4 about 7.5 minutes after liftoff. The booster’s re-entry produced sonic booms heard by people near the base. SpaceX confirmed it was the 25th flight for that particular booster.
The launch was part of a very busy day for SpaceX, which also launched the Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA from Florida’s Space Coast earlier in the day and aims to loft the NROL-97 flight for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office late tonight. Meanwhile, the upper stage of the Vandenberg rocket continued on to low Earth orbit to deploy its cargo manifest over a roughly 11-minute stretch beginning 54.5 minutes after launch.
Payload Breakdown on the Transporter-18 Rideshare Mission
The 130 payloads carried on the dedicated small satellite rideshare mission represent a diverse mix of spacecraft configurations. SpaceX’s mission description notes that the manifest features cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads, a pair of spacecraft equipped with reentry vehicles, and four orbital transfer vehicles transporting 41 of those payloads for subsequent deployment.
While the flight did not set a record for most payloads launched at once, it came close to the current mark of 143, sent on SpaceX’s Transporter-1 mission in January 2021.