SpaceX launched an epic shared spaceflight mission today (August 16).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 116 different satellites on the company’s Transporter 11 mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space Base in California at 2:56 p.m. ET (1856 GMT; 11:56 a.m. local time).
The Falcon 9’s first stage touched down near the launch site about eight minutes after liftoff, as seen in a livestream on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was the 12th successful flight for the veteran rocket. SpaceX is expected to confirm the payload deployment later today.
Related to: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches two Maxar satellites on its 20th flight, tying the record (video)
Transporter 11 includes a set of payloads from different companies. For example, one of the payloads is Nvidia’s Jetson Orin NX chip. This chip is a graphics processing unit (GPU) popular for AI and edge computing.
The GPU will be protected by a nanoparticle-impregnated polymer made by Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), a spin-off of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. The university has already tested it on the International Space Station, but Transporter 11 will be the first time real hardware will be protected during a space mission.
SpaceX has already launched four more missions in the past week, with two of those efforts dedicated to sending more satellites into space for its giant Starlink network.
Transporter 11 will be SpaceX’s 80th launch in 2024, with more than 70% of the satellites set to be dedicated to Starlink.
This article was updated at 1:10 p.m. EST with a slightly revised launch time posted by SpaceX on its website, and again after the successful launch.
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