Starfish Otter, other payloads launch on Transporter 18

What happened

SpaceX launched a Transporter rideshare mission aboard a Falcon 9 from California, on the same… The post Starfish Otter, other payloads (what a rocket is carrying) launch on Transporter 18 appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com . SpaceX launched a Transporter rideshare mission aboard a Falcon 9 from California, on the same day as the Crew-13 and NROL-97 Falcon Heavy missions were scheduled out of Florida. SpaceX is a space company based in Hawthorne, and its products and services include Falcon.

This is the first time in a while that the company is using all three Falcon-capable launch pads in the same general time period. The 58-minute launch window ended at 12:16 PM PDT (19:16 UTC), and this was the 110th Falcon 9 mission of 2026.

The mission’s 130 payloads featured a prototype AI satellite for Google, the NASA-funded SPRITE telescope, and Starfish’s first Otter servicing vehicle, among others. The rocket took a southerly trajectory suitable for sun-synchronous orbiting payloads.