WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s Transporter-13 rideshare mission on March 15 carried dozens of small satellites into orbit, including several funded by U.S. military and intelligence agencies.
This was SpaceX’s 13th dedicated smallsat rideshare that has become a regular pipeline to orbit for both commercial and government customers.
Among the 74 payloads was a technology demonstrator from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency responsible for designing, building, and operating U.S. spy satellites. The payload consists of two cubesats designed and operated by NRO’s Advanced Systems & Technology Directorate for an unspecified research mission.
Transporter-13 also carried small satellites from commercial startups that have received military funding to explore defense applications.
Earth observation startup Albedo launched Clarity-1, its first satellite designed to operate in very low Earth orbit to provide high-resolution visible and thermal imagery. The company recently secured a U.S. Air Force Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) contract potentially worth $12 million, with partial funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory.
MuonSpace, which specializes in wildfire monitoring satellites, launched its FireSat Protoflight satellite, a prototype for a planned constellation. The company received a $2.9 million contract from SpaceWERX, the U.S. Space Force’s technology arm, to evaluate its technology for military applications, including high-resolution imagery of cloud cover and weather conditions that could support military and intelligence operation planning.
Space services startup Turion Space deployed its Droid.002 spacecraft, designed for space situational awareness and space debris monitoring. Turion secured a $1.9 million contract from SpaceWERX to develop technologies for autonomous spacecraft docking and maneuvering — capabilities the Space Force is interested in for engaging uncooperative space objects and enhancing in-space mobility.
The mission also included Varda Space Industries’ W-3, the company’s third reentry capsule designed for in-space manufacturing and as a testbed for materials and payloads at hypersonic flight speeds. W-3 carries a navigation system called an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) developed by the U.S. Air Force and Innovative Scientific Solutions Incorporated, which will be tested at reentry speeds it was designed to withstand but has never encountered in actual flight conditions.
The capsule will remain in orbit for several weeks before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and landing at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia.