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SpaceX launches its 'Starfall' return capsule for 2nd time ever (video)
Starfall went up today (Oct. 20) on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission.
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SpaceX just launched its mysterious "Starfall" return capsule for the second time ever.
Starfall was one of 32 payloads on the company's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, which launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:04 a.m. EDT (1104 GMT) today (Oct. 20) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
SpaceX has been relatively quiet about Starfall, which debuted this past June on a Falcon 9 launch from the Cape.
That June 23 flight was a dedicated demonstration mission for Starfall, designed to show that the capsule can fly in a controlled fashion and survive the harrowing downward trip through Earth's atmosphere.
And those will be Starfall's main jobs. The vehicle "will enable affordable, routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing," SpaceX in a June 23 X post, one of the few public statements the company has made about Starfall.
Indeed, most of the details that we have about the capsule come from an environmental assessment that was published by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in May.
According to that document, the disk-shaped Starfall is roughly 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall and 10.2 feet (3.1 m) wide. It weighs about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) and can bring 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of payload back down to Earth.
Starfall wasn't the only return capsule that went up on Bandwagon-5. Among the other 31 payloads on the flight was W-Series 7, the latest orbital "mini-factory" built and operated by the California company Varda Space Industries.