As SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 140 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday morning, officials warned that residents along the Central Coast may hear one or more sonic booms as the mission heads to orbit.
After scrubbing a previous takeoff for this mission on Wednesday, SpaceX set its sights for a 10:44 a.m. liftoff Friday from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg for its Transporter-15 rideshare mission. The mission is sending 140 payloads to a sun-synchronous orbit, including cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and multiple orbital transfer vehicles that will deploy an additional 13 spacecraft at a later time.
Among the payloads manifest is Umbra-11, deployed on behalf of Santa Barbara-based Umbra, an American space-technology company that builds advanced radar-imaging systems and operates a constellation of high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites.
The first-stage booster supporting this mission is flying for the 30th time, having previously supported a long list of national-security, Earth-observation and Starlink launches. After stage separation, Falcon 9 will land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship positioned in the Pacific Ocean…