Posted: Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 12:47 PM ET (1647 GMT)
A Falcon 9 launched a NASA space science mission and several other smallsats Wednesday. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:13 pm EDT (1813 GMT), placing several payloads into sun-synchronous orbits. The primary payload was NASA’s Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, or TRACERS, mission, a pair of smallsats to study how the solar wind couples with the Earth’s magnetic field. Several other smallsats on the launch included one to test a novel smallsat design and new Earth science sensor, as well as one that will test a terminal that can communicate with both NASA’s TDRS and commercial communications satellites.

Related Links:

•  SpaceNews article
•  Space.com article
•  NASA press release