{"id":62188,"date":"2026-07-06T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/?guid=8be2267802bf743d207caf5f3037c97e"},"modified":"2026-07-07T07:28:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:28:33","slug":"watch-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launch-81-satellites-early-on-july-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2026\/07\/06\/watch-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launch-81-satellites-early-on-july-7\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX launches 81 satellites to orbit from California, lands rocket on ship at sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n                            \n                            <article>\n                                <p>SpaceX launched a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7).<\/p><p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/18962-spacex-falcon-9.html\"><u>Falcon 9<\/u><\/a> rocket carrying 81 payloads lifted off from California's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/34147-vandenberg-air-force-base.html\"><u>Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/u><\/a> on Tuesday at 3:12 a.m. EDT (0712 GMT; 12:12 a.m. local California time), kicking off a mission SpaceX called Transporter-17.<\/p><p>As that name suggests, Transporter-17 was the 17th flight of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/18853-spacex.html\"><u>SpaceX<\/u><\/a>'s Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/spacex-launches-private-space-station-pathfinder-haven-demo-17-other-satellites-to-orbit\"><u>four missions to date<\/u><\/a>.<\/p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/ZhVvGRJ1.html\" id=\"ZhVvGRJ1\" title=\"Blastoff! SpaceX launches Starlink satellites to complete doubleheader, nails landing\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p>The 20 Transporter and Bandwagon missions that flew before Transporter-17 sent more than 1,800 payloads to Earth orbit. Transporter-1 lofted 143 of those back <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/spacex-launches-143-satellites-transporter-1-rocket-landing\"><u>in January 2021<\/u><\/a>, which remains the global single-launch record.<\/p><p>The 81 payloads that went up on Transporter-17 included \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/34324-cubesats.html\"><u>cubesats<\/u><\/a>, microsats, hosted payloads and orbital transfer vehicles carrying eight of those payloads to be deployed at a later time,\" SpaceX wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spacex.com\/launches\/transporter17\" ><u>mission description<\/u><\/a>. <\/p><p>Perhaps the biggest satellite riding the Falcon 9 on Tuesday was CAS500-4, a South Korean Earth-observation craft that tips the scales at about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms). <\/p><p>The satellite, whose name is short for \"Compact Advanced Satellite 500-4,\" is the fourth member of a planned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eoportal.org\/satellite-missions\/cas500\" ><u>five-satellite CAS500 fleet<\/u><\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/low-earth-orbit\"><u>low Earth orbit<\/u><\/a> (LEO). CAS500-4 will help the South Korean government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eoportal.org\/satellite-missions\/cas500#CompactAdvancedPayloadWideSwath\" ><u>monitor crops and forests<\/u><\/a>, among other tasks.<\/p><figure class=\"van-image-figure  inline-layout\" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:2844px;\"><p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:56.26%;\"><img id=\"UmgVdQY7eZEL4anPP2U294\" name=\"Screenshot 2026-07-07 at 12.21.07\u202fAM\" alt=\"a black and white rocket rests on the deck of a ship at sea at night\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/UmgVdQY7eZEL4anPP2U294.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"middle\" fullscreen=\"\" width=\"2844\" height=\"1600\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" class=\"inline\"><\/p><\/div><\/div><figcaption itemprop=\"caption description\" class=\" inline-layout\"><span class=\"caption-text\">The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on the deck of a drone ship shortly after launching the Transporter-17 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 7, 2026. <\/span><span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">(Image credit: SpaceX)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>The first stage of the Transporter-17 Falcon 9 landed about 8.5 minutes after launch on the SpaceX droneship \"Of Course I Still Love You,\" which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 11th flight for this particular booster, according to the company's Transporter-17 mission description.<\/p><p>The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 81 payloads to LEO, where they'll be deployed starting about 50.5 minutes after launch. CAS500-4 won't be released until nearly 2.5 hours after liftoff.<\/p><p>Transporter-17 was the 79th Falcon 9 launch of 2026. Nearly 80% of this year's missions have been devoted to building out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/spacex-starlink-satellites.html\"><u>Starlink<\/u><\/a>, SpaceX's giant broadband constellation in LEO.<\/p><p><em><strong>Editor's note: <\/strong><\/em><em>This story was updated at 3:25 a.m. ET on July 7 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.<\/em><\/p>\n                                                            <\/article>\n                            \n                        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 81 payloads to orbit from California early Tuesday morning (July 7), then landed on a ship at sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2799,1263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-launches-amp-spacecraft","category-space-exploration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62188"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62200,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62188\/revisions\/62200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}