A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches on the Transporter-16 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base on March 30, 2026.
(Image credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX will launch a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7), and you can watch the action live.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 81 payloads is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday, during a 95-minute window that opens at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 a.m. local California time).You can watch the mission, which is called Transporter-17, live via SpaceX. Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch.As its name suggests, Transporter-17 will be the 17th mission of SpaceX's Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched four missions to date.The 20 Transporter and Bandwagon missions that have flown to date sent more than 1,800 payloads to Earth orbit. Transporter-1 lofted 143 of those back in January 2021, which remains the global single-launch record.The 81 payloads going up on Transporter-17 include "cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and orbital transfer vehicles carrying eight of those payloads to be deployed at a later time," SpaceX wrote in a mission description.Perhaps the biggest satellite riding the Falcon 9 on Tuesday is CAS500-4, a South Korean Earth-observation craft that tips the scales at about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms).The satellite, whose name is short for "Compact Advanced Satellite 500-4," will be the fourth member of a planned five-satellite CAS500 fleet in low Earth orbit (LEO). CAS500-4 will help the South Korean government monitor crops and forests, among other tasks.
