People near Vandenberg Space Force Base may hear sonic booms Thursday following SpaceX’s latest launch.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Transporter-18 ridershare mission launched three Canadian satellites from California on Thursday: two methane monitors for GHGSat and the first satellite built by NordSpace.

SpaceX launched its latest rideshare mission Oct. 1, carrying a wide variety of spacecraft even as the industry struggles to deal with the impending end of such missions.

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Transporter 18 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare) launched 1 October 2026 UTC · SpaceX · Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA. The flight record and mission details.

SpaceX plans to launch a Transporter rideshare mission aboard a Falcon 9 from California, on… The post Starfish Otter, other payloads set to launch on Transporter 18 appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.

SpaceX plans to launch a Transporter rideshare mission aboard a Falcon 9 from California, on… The post Starfish Otter, other payloads set to launch on Transporter 18 appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.

SpaceX（スペースX）は日本時間2026年10月2日、ヴァンデンバーグ宇宙軍基地から「Falcon 9（ファルコン9）」ロケットを打ち上げ、小型衛星の相乗りミッション「Transporter-18（トランスポーター18）」を実施しました。搭載された130のペイロードは、所定の軌道へと投入されています

The chips are riding on a Planet Labs satellite as part of SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which departed Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:18 a.m. local time. The mission carries 130 payloads in total, according to SpaceX. Alphabet is a significant investor in SpaceX, with a stake currently valued at over $82 billion, according to CNBC. SpaceX has also said it intends to develop orbital data centers, with satellite hardware that includes graphics processing units and solar panels manufactured in partnership with Tesla $TSLA. SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said in September that the company will deploy "supercompute in space" in 2027, according to CNBC. SpaceX has announced plans to launch its first Starmind AI satellites, powered by Nvidia $NVDA chips, targeting the fourth quarter of 2027. Those satellites will center on an Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale system; SpaceX has also filed regulatory paperwork seeking permission to place as many as one million data center satellites in orbit. SpaceX struck deals with both Google and Anthropic to sell access to its compute infrastructure. Thursday's mission marked the 25th flight for the Falcon 9 booster involved, whose first stage touched down back at Vandenberg roughly seven and a half...

/PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Tanager-2 satellite was successfully launched into orbit onboard the SpaceX Transporter-18 rideshare mission. Tanager-2 is the...