An Nvidia-backed data center demo, a test bed for Vast’s future commercial space station and an artificial intelligence-powered weather satellite were among the spacecraft deployed to low Earth orbit on SpaceX’s latest bandwagon ride share mission.
Bandwagon-4 was the fourth multi-passenger flight to mid-inclination orbit and the 18th mission as part of SpaceX’s Small Sat Ride Share program, which also includes the Transporter series of missions to higher inclinations.
Liftoff from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station occurred at 1:09:59 a.m. EDT (0509:59 UTC).
The 45th Weather Squadron estimated a 95 percent chance of favorable weather at liftoff and only a small chance of interference from cumulus clouds.
The mission used Falcon 9 first stage booster B1091, which previously launched two batches of satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper and will eventually fly as the center booster for the Falcon Heavy rocket.
Less than eight minutes after liftoff, B1091 touched down on Landing Zone 2 at Launch Complex 13 at Cape Canaveral. This is likely to be the last booster to return to LZ-2 as SpaceX transitions to a new landing zone on Pad 40. The company has already retired Landing Zone 1 as the Space Force prepares to turn the LC-13 over to new commercial launch providers Phantom Space and Via Space.
This was the 15th landing ever on LZ-2 and the 528th Falcon 9 booster landing.
What’s on board?
The primary payload at the top of the stack, known as the “cake topper” in SpaceX ride share documents, was South Korea’s Agency for Defense Development (ADD) fifth Korea 425 satellite. Due to the presence of these sensitive military satellites on each of the last three Bandwagon missions, SpaceX has ended its live launch coverage prior to payload deployment.
In 2018, Thales Alenia Space signed contracts with two South Korean companies, Aerospace Industries and Hanwha Systems Corporation, to develop four synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites for the Korea 425 Project constellation. The fifth satellite in the reconnaissance constellation was an electromagnetic and infrared satellite to be launched back in December 2023 on another Falcon 9 rocket.
This last SAR satellite deployed approximately 14 minutes after launch. The Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage performed two more burns of its Merlin vacuum engines, lasting one second each, before beginning the deployment sequence for the remaining 17 spacecraft.
Vast’s Heaven demo was also among those satellites. The California-based company is using the mission to test several systems, such as navigation software, propulsion and flight computers, that will be used on its first commercial space station, Haven-1.
Vaast aims to launch its Haven-1 before May 2026 and will host a four-member crew of astronauts for the approximately two-week long mission. Those astronauts have not been announced yet.
Build and testing of the Haven demo is complete, and it is now undergoing final integration for launch. In the meantime, we are moving toward critical systems testing and continuing to build momentum on the Haven-1 flight hardware. Haven-1’s primary structure qualification document has been successfully completed… pic.twitter.com/ATJ6Bryhde
-Vishal (@Vishal) 26 September 2025
Another spacecraft making headlines is from StarCloud, a defense and space manufacturing startup backed by the Nvidia Inception Program, NFX, Y Combinator, and others.
The 60-kilogram (132 lb) StarCloud-1 satellite (about the size of a small refrigerator) will carry an Nvidia H100 GPU (graphics processing unit), which Nvidia describes as “the first time a state-of-the-art, data center-class GPU has been deployed in outer space.”
“In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy,” said Philip Johnston, co-founder and CEO of the startup, which is based in Redmond, Washington. “The only cost to the environment will be at launch, then 10 times the carbon-dioxide savings over the life of the data center compared to powering the data center terrestrially on Earth.”
A major drag on current data centers powering AI systems are their large resources, such as the fresh water to cool them and the carbon they emit. An article by the Institute for Environment and Energy, a nonprofit founded by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, found that “large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, which is equivalent to the water use of a city with a population of 10,000 to 50,000 people.”
StarCloud believes that its future space-based data centers “could be ten times cheaper than land-based alternatives.” Johnson predicted that “in 10 years, almost all new data centers will be built in outer space.”
I couldn’t be more excited to share this @Starcloud_Inc1The -1 satellite is targeted for launch at 1:09 a.m. ET on Nov. 2 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida as part of the Bandwagon-4 rideshare mission… pic.twitter.com/K5tqMI4tVz
– Philip Johnston (@PhilipJohnst0n) 30 October 2025
Germany-based ExoLaunch was responsible for demonstrating and deploying 13 of the 18 payloads that flew. These included a trio of SAR satellites from ICEYE and Space42 and four Pico satellites from Turkey-based Anadolu Azansi.
Another Turkish company, Fergani Space, displayed its second satellite to date, FGN-100-D2. It is part of the company’s Positioning Satellite Constellation Project, which aims to launch 100 satellites for Turkey with GPS-like capabilities.
Tomorrow Companies Inc. also demonstrated a pair of its artificial intelligence-using weather satellites.
