SpaceX Transporter-18 to carry three Canadian satellites

A SpaceX Transporter-18 rideshare flight will carry two GHGSat methane-monitoring satellites and NordSpace’s first spacecraft into orbit on Thursday, along with 127 other reported payloads.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, with a 58-minute window opening at 11:18 a.m. Pacific time on Oct. 1. SpaceX has a backup opportunity on Oct. 2. Of the 130 payloads, SpaceX says 41 of the payloads will be released later, from four orbital transfer vehicles. There are also two spacecraft with reentry vehicles.

GHGSat flies again

GHGSat, the Montreal company that tracks methane leaks from orbit, is flying satellites C18 and C19, named Eleanor and Aidan. Its previous pair, built by Spire Global, flew on Transporter-17 and returned their first methane detections within weeks.

These two new satellites were built by SFL Missions which was contracted last November to build both in Toronto on its NEMO platform, a satellite of about 15 kilograms. SFL also manifested their place on the launch.

NordSpace’s first satellite

NordSpace, which is building rockets and a launch site in Newfoundland and Labrador, among other projects, is flying its first satellite. Terra Nova was built at the company’s Space Systems Lab in Markham, Ont. NordSpace calls it a dual-use defence and commercial demonstrator. It carries the company’s own spacecraft platform, an electric thruster and a camera that analyzes images on board using an NVIDIA processor. Planned tasks range from tracking objects in orbit to spotting wildfires.

“Terra Nova represents far more than a satellite for NordSpace,” the company said in a Feb. 5 post on X. “It’s the embodiment of our sovereign end-to-end space missions vision for Canada, allowing us to walk in the shoes of our future launch customers.”

The satellite was manifested by Exolaunch, the Berlin company that prepares and deploys satellites for rideshare customers.

Deployment timeline and other Canadian payloads

SpaceX’s timeline has the two GHGSat satellites separating about 55 minutes after liftoff, and Terra Nova about four minutes later.

There were two other Canadian payloads that at one-time were linked to this flight. They were university CubeSats, funded through the Canadian Space Agency’s CubeSats Initiative in Canada for STEM (CUBICS). SpaceQ reported in August that the University of Alberta’s Ex-Alta 3 and McMaster University’s PRESET could fly on Transporter-18. These satellites are manifested by Exolaunch through the Canadian Space Agency. We don’t have a new date Ex-Alta 3, but an update from the PRESET team said their launch was now scheduled for mid-2027.

Known Transporter-18 rideshare manifest