Twilight
SpaceX inaugurated its Twilight rideshare service with a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit flight.
Pandora, a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers SmallSat, is designed to observe at least twenty transiting exoplanets with a 0.45-metre telescope collecting simultaneous visible and near-infrared data. Its goal is to separate stellar contamination from true atmospheric absorption signatures, sharpening exoplanet composition measurements that depend on transit spectroscopy.
LIFTOFF
JAN 11 2026launched from SLC-4E Vandenberg
aboard Falcon 9 B5 Twilight into SSO
Broadcast
Watch how the launch went
Booster
B1097.5
Landed on ground pad · LZ-4
Payloads · 20
- 01
Pandora
Visible Astronomy
- 02
Hawk 13A-C
SIGINT
- 03
ICEYE X x 2
Earth observation
- 04
Umbra-12
Earth observation
- 05
Acadia x 2
Earth observation
- 06
HyMS
Meteorology
- 07
AETHER x 10
Communications
- 08
MINAS x 8 (Lemur-2)
Meteorology
- 09
Hydra-2
Earth observation
- 10
SPARCS
Space telescope
- 11
Flamingo 1
Space Situational Awareness
- 12
CarbSAR IOD
Technology demonstration
- 13
BlackCAT
Space telescope
- 14
Dcubed-1/Araqys-D1
Technology demonstration
- 15
Tomorrow S10-S11
Meteorology
- 16
Conecta-IoT x 4
Communications
- 17
Capella 18 (Acadia 8)
Earth observation
- 18
Capella 19 (Acadia 9)
Earth observation
- 19
ICEYE X64
Earth observation
- 20
Lemur-2 x 8
Earth observation