On a winter morning in California, SpaceX launched its Twilight Rideshare Mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, marking a new chapter in the company's rideshare endeavors. The mission, which took off on Sunday, January 11, at 5:44 AM PST, carried a diverse payload of 40 spacecraft into a dawn / dusk sun-synchronous orbit. This orbit follows the Earth's terminator, the line that separates day and night, and the payloads were deployed within an altitude range of approximately 500 to 600 km above Earth. The mission was a significant milestone for SpaceX, as it was the first of its kind, not part of the Transporter or Bandwagon series.
At the heart of this mission was NASA's Pandora exoplanet characterization mission. The Pandora spacecraft is equipped with a 45 cm diameter telescope, a visible light photometer, and a near-infrared spectrograph. These instruments will enable the spacecraft to observe 20 stars, a mix of sunlike G stars, orange K dwarfs, and red M-class stars, known to host exoplanets.
The Twilight Rideshare Mission was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket, with Booster 1097 conducting a return to launch site maneuver before touching down safely at Landing ← →
Fresh off a record-shattering launch cadence in 2025, SpaceX successfully launched its first rideshare mission of 2026 from Space Launch Complex-4E ...You might also find this interesting: Visit website
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