SpaceX plans to launch a space-facing rideshare today (Aug. 16).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Transporter 11 group of satellites is slated to fly to orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California no earlier than 2:20 p.m. EDT (1820 GMT; 11:20 a.m. local time.)
SpaceX usually opens the broadcast about five minutes before launch on X, formerly Twitter, where you can watch the event live.
Related: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 2 Maxar satellites on record-tying 20th flight (video)
Transporter 11 includes a range of payloads from different companies. One of the payloads, for example, is an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX chip. The chip is a noted artificial intelligence and edge computing graphics processing unit (GPU).
The GPU will be shielded with a nanoparticle-infused polymer made by Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), a spin-out from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. The university already did a test on the International Space Station, but Transporter 11 will be the first time it shields real hardware during a space mission.
SpaceX has already launched four other missions in the past week, with two of those efforts devoted to sending more satellites into space for the Starlink megaconstellation.
The Transporter 11 launch is expected to be SpaceX’s 80th of 2024, with more than 70% of the satellites devoted for Starlink.
