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SpaceX is gearing up to launch over a hundred satellites and two lunar landers in a single day. The firm's first launch is slated to take off later today from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It will launch the Transporter 12 mission to low-east orbit (LEO) to carry 131 payloads to space. Then, early morning tomorrow, it will launch Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander for NASA from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This mission will also fly a lunar lander developed by the Japanese firm ispace. ispace's Hakuto-R lander will launch for the second time as part of the Resilience mission to send six payloads to the lunar surface.
SpaceX Gears Up To Launch Back To Back Falcon 9 Missions Ahead Of Starship Flight 7
Ahead of Starship Flight 7, which is slated to lift off tomorrow, SpaceX has had a busy start to 2025. The firm has launched six missions so far, out of which most have been for its Starlink satellite internet constellation. The remaining two Falcon 9 launches sent an Emirati telecommunications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit and launched the latest batch of Starshield satellites for the Department of Defense's National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
SpaceX's upcoming two Falcon 9 launches are also non-Starlink missions. The first of these is the latest in the firm's Transporter rideshare missions. These missions bundle micro, nano and small satellites in a single payload to consolidate resources and reduce launch costs. The latest transporter mission, set to launch in the morning Pacific time from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, will send 131 payloads to space.
These payloads also include orbital transfer vehicles. These are specialized vehicles that deploy with the rest of the Falcon 9 second stage's payloads but then maneuver themselves to suit the needs of individual payloads. The list of customers for the Transporter 12 mission is quite diverse, as it includes satellites from entities in Japan, Germany, India, Türkiye and others.
SpaceX's second launch is slated to lift off from Florida a little after midnight Eastern Time tomorrow. It will carry two lunar landers. The first lander is Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander that has been contracted by NASA as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. NASA's CLPS program contracts the private sector to send payloads to the Moon to enable the agency to prepare itself for the Artemis program's goals to land the first crew on the lunar surface since the Apollo program.
The Blue Ghost will fly ten NASA payloads. These include an X-ray imager, a camera to study the lunar surface, an instrument to study the lunar surface through magnetic and electric fields and a computer designed to demonstrate it can survive disruptions from space radiation.
Along with Blue Ghost, SpaceX's Florida lunar launch will also fly Japanese firm ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 2. Called the RESILIENCE lunar lander, the private lander will host a 5 kilogram rover and payloads from the Japanese entertainment firm Bandai Namco, Taiwan's National Central University and other entities. Namco's payload will be a commemorative plate, while the RESILIENCE is intended to serve as a cultural artifact by carrying a UNESCO memory disk.
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