Vandenberg Space Force Base, California – SpaceX launched 81 payloads into orbit early Tuesday morning aboard a Falcon 9 rocket during the mission known as Transporter-17.

The rocket lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:12 a.m. EDT, beginning the 17th mission in SpaceX’s Transporter rideshare program.

Transporter-17 carried cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads, and orbital transfer vehicles transporting eight payloads scheduled for deployment at a later time.

Among the satellites on board was CAS500-4, a South Korean Earth-observation satellite weighing about 1,100 pounds, or 500 kilograms.

The spacecraft is the fourth satellite in the planned five-member CAS500 constellation in low Earth orbit and will assist the South Korean government with monitoring crops, forests, and other activities.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX droneship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean. The booster was making its 11th flight.

The rocket’s upper stage continued carrying the 81 payloads into low Earth orbit, with deployments beginning about 50.5 minutes after launch. CAS500-4 was scheduled for release nearly 2.5 hours after liftoff.

The 20 Transporter and Bandwagon missions flown before Transporter-17 delivered more than 1,800 payloads to orbit. Transporter-1 launched 143 payloads in January 2021, a record for a single launch worldwide.

Transporter-17 marked the 79th Falcon 9 launch of 2026, with nearly 80 percent of this year’s missions focused on expanding the Starlink broadband constellation in low Earth orbit.

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