Payloads on the mission included Gilmour’s first satellite bus, the next Varda capsule set to touch down in South Australia and RASCube-1, a platform for operating student experiments.
In total, Transporter 14 carried 70 payloads to a sun-synchronous orbit, including cubesats, microsats, re-entry capsules and orbital transfer vehicles. The launch took place via a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and you can watch the as-live webcast here.
The most significant payload was the third Varda capsule that will eventually re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land at South Australia’s Koonibba Test Range. Varda uses the site to test how the onboard contents will react to reentering the Earth's atmosphere at speeds that can reach up to Mach 25.
The next capsule, W-4, will be the first the company has built entirely in-house, rather than relying on buses supplied by Rocket Lab.
W-4 will test the new bus design and attempt an in-space manufacturing process known as solution-based crystallisation, which involves dissolving a compound in a solvent to form crystals.
“Getting back data from the crystals helps researchers understand the space environment and how it affects drug manufacturing,” said Nicholas Cialdella, Varda’s CTO.
Also onboard will be RASCube-1, a platform that will operate two student-led experiments, hosted within The Exploration Company’s Nyx Capsule.
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Space education startup Robinson Aerospace Systems manufactures flat-pack satellite kits for high school and university students and is headed by CEO Edward Robinson, who founded the company at the age of 18.
Inside are modules built by school students from across the world as part of a global space education program, Project Space Call.
“We’re honoured to be providing the systems that will host Space Call during its launch to orbit, and it’s been incredible to work with the students involved as they develop their electronic modules,” Robinson said earlier.
Finally, Gilmour’s 100-kilogram satellite platform, ElaraSat, is carrying a hyperspectral imager from CSIRO and is the first satellite bus the Aussie firm has manufactured itself.
The launch means Gilmour joins Fleet, Inovor, Space Machines Company, and Skykraft in building satellite or satellite buses (effectively the fuselage or main body).
The launch of Transporter 14 comes after the previous Transporter rideshare mission, 13, carried Defence’s second Buccaneer satellite and another Varda capsule. Transporter 12, meanwhile, carried two new Fleet satellites and New Zealand’s second military satellite.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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