Bandwagon-5 flies SpaceX's Starfall capsule a second time, with Varda's W-7 mini-factory
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:04 a.m. EDT on Oct. 20 with 32 payloads, including the second flight of SpaceX's Starfall return capsule and Varda's W-Series 7. In-orbit manufacturing is becoming a crowded field.
SpaceX launched its Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission on a Falcon 9 at 7:04 a.m. EDT (13:04 CEST) on Tuesday, October 20, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. An attempt on October 19 was scrubbed because of poor weather in the booster recovery zone (Spaceflight Now). The first stage, booster B1085, flew for the 19th time and landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes after liftoff (Space.com).
Starfall's second flight
The 32 payloads included Starfall, SpaceX's own uncrewed return capsule. It debuted on a dedicated Falcon 9 demonstration flight on June 23. SpaceX has said little about it publicly. It described Starfall as a vehicle that "will enable affordable, routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing" (via Space.com).
According to the FAA environmental assessment cited by Space.com and Spaceflight Now, Starfall is:
- about 0.75 m tall and 3.1 m wide;
- around 2,100 kg in mass;
- able to bring about 1,000 kg of payload back to Earth.
On this mission it was scheduled to be the last payload released, about 2 hours 48 minutes after liftoff.
Varda W-Series 7
Also on board was W-Series 7, the latest orbital "mini-factory" from California-based Varda Space Industries. It was scheduled to deploy about 1 hour 6 minutes after launch. NASASpaceflight reports that it carries an experiment testing whether microgravity can overcome the poor solubility of a PROTAC cancer drug: molecules crystallise differently in microgravity, which may improve the medicine's properties.
Who else flew
According to Spaceflight Now, 20 of the 31 customer payloads were manifested by Exolaunch. They include four HawkEye 360 radio-frequency monitoring satellites, four ICEYE satellites and six navigation satellites for Xona Space Systems. Planet's Pelican-12 Earth-observation satellite was also aboard (Space.com).
The market angle
- SpaceX now has its own return capsule. Its customers in microgravity research become potential Starfall customers, a new line next to launch and Starlink. SpaceX reports Q3 results tonight at 22:30 CEST (earnings week preview).
- Rideshare lists show where private capital is going. ICEYE, HawkEye 360 and Xona are all core holdings of the London-listed Seraphim trust (our analysis).
.jpg){kind=link}