SpaceX launches 119 payloads from California on Transporter-16 rideshare mission

Monday 30 March 2026 - 11:55

By: Dakir Madiha

SpaceX launches 119 payloads from California on Transporter-16 rideshare mission

SpaceX launched its Transporter-16 rideshare mission Monday morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, sending 119 payloads to a sun-synchronous orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. One of the largest dedicated smallsat rideshare flights in SpaceX history, the mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East during a window that opened at 3:20 a.m. PDT.

The flight carried a diverse mix of spacecraft, including CubeSats, microsatellites, hosted payloads, an atmospheric reentry vehicle, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying eight additional payloads for later deployment. The Falcon 9's first stage, booster B1093 flying for the 12th time, was set to land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean following stage separation.

German company Exolaunch managed the largest share of the manifest with 57 payloads, providing launch access to more than 25 commercial, government, and academic customers from countries including the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey. Texas-based Seops Space handled 19 payloads, comprising 14 CubeSats and five PocketQubes, representing organizations from 13 countries including Canada, Malaysia, Nepal, and Vietnam.

Momentus Inc. contributed its Vigoride-7 orbital service vehicle, hosting 10 payloads with demonstrations of rendezvous and proximity operations as well as in-orbit manufacturing. NearSpace Launch carried eight satellites including the Dream Big constellation, a six-satellite project built collaboratively by six Midwestern universities.

NASA had several projects aboard the mission. The AEPEX CubeSat will study how high-energy particles from Earth's radiation belts transfer energy to the upper atmosphere, research that could improve space weather forecasting with implications for radio communications and satellites. Three CubeSats developed under NASA's MagQuest challenge will demonstrate new tools for measuring Earth's magnetic field, supporting the World Magnetic Model used in national security, commercial aviation, and mobile navigation.

The TechEdSat23 CubeSat will test a radiation sensor, a miniaturized NOAA data-collection radio, and an exo-brake device for rapid deorbiting. The R5-S10 CubeSat will use a space Wi-Fi router developed by Solstar Space Company to transfer demonstration data to the Vigoride vehicle for onward transmission to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA is also collecting thermal protection data through sensors on a Varda Space Industries W-6 capsule, which will capture measurements on hypersonic atmospheric reentry during its return to Earth.

Across its rideshare program, SpaceX has now launched more than 1,600 payloads to orbit.