SpaceX launches 116 satellites on Transporter 11 rideshare mission

Science: SpaceX launched a spectacular rideshare mission to space. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 116 individual satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on the company’s Transporter 11 mission at 2:56 p.m. EDT (1856 GMT; 11:56 p.m. local time). The Falcon 9’s first stage landed near the launch site about eight minutes after takeoff, as broadcasted on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was the 12th successful flight for the veteran booster. SpaceX is expected to confirm the payload deployment later today. Related: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launches 2 Maxar Satellites on Record-Tying 20th Flight (Video) Transporter 11 includes several payloads from different companies. For example, one of the payloads is the Nvidia Jetson Orin NX chip. The chip is a well-known artificial intelligence and edge computing graphics processing unit (GPU). The GPU will be protected with a nanoparticle-infused polymer made by Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), a spin-out from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. The university has already conducted a test on the International Space Station, but Transporter 11 will be the first time it protects real hardware during a space mission. SpaceX has launched four other missions in the past week, two of those efforts dedicated to sending more satellites into space for the Starlink megaconstellation.