On a beautiful Tuesday, January 14, California morning, at 11:09 a.m. PT, with blue skies and the ocean and beach in the background SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-12 mission to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This was the second flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched NROL-126.
Transporter-12 is a dedicated smallsat rideshare mission with 131 payloads, including CubeSats, MicroSats, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying 30 of those payloads, 14 of which will be deployed at a later time. To date, SpaceX has launched more than 1,100 payloads to orbit for 130+ customers across our entire Rideshare program.
The rocket’s first stage booster did a traditional landing back at Vandenberg about 7.5 minutes after liftoff in a ground landing at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. With the ocean and sand in the background it was SpaceX’s 397th landing of an orbital class rocket.