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7h ago

SpaceX Debuts 'Twilight' Rideshare, Deploys About 40 Smallsats to Dusk–Dawn Orbit

The terminator trajectory provides near‑continuous sunlight to power instruments, enabling long, uninterrupted observations for science and commercial payloads.

A Falcon-9 sits vertically on the launch pad at California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base in 2016. The same model of rocket will launch the National Reconnaissance Office’s NROL-105 mission from Vandenberg on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. Credit: SpaceX
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The Space X Twilight mission lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California early Sunday morning carrying 47 satellites that were later deployed into Earth orbit. Among the payloads were 10 satellites build by Canadian company Kepler Communications Inc. and a NASA's exoplanet observer called Pandora. Jan. 11, 2026.
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Overview

  • A Falcon 9 launched Jan. 11 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, with the first stage returning to Landing Zone 4 for recovery.
  • Payload releases began about 61 minutes after liftoff and wrapped roughly 2.5 hours later following brief SES‑2, SES‑3 and SES‑4 burns.
  • NASA’s Pandora, SPARCS and BlackCAT are in orbit and starting commissioning, with Pandora targeting a one‑year primary campaign to study exoplanet atmospheres.
  • Kepler Communications deployed 10 Aether satellites equipped with four optical terminals per spacecraft to grow its low‑latency space data‑relay network.
  • Exolaunch handled more than 22 customer deployments, including Plan‑S IoT satellites, Spire spacecraft, Hawkeye 360 and radar‑imaging payloads, plus Dcubed’s Araqys‑D1 in‑space manufacturing demo.