Watch SpaceX launch Google AI satellite, 129 other payloads to orbit today

SpaceX will launch 130 payloads, including a prototype Google AI satellite, to orbit today (Oct. 1), and you can watch the action live.

The Transporter-18 rideshare mission is scheduled to lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today during a 58-minute window that opens at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT; 11:18 a.m. local California time).

You can watch it live via SpaceX. Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch.

The highest-profile payload going up on Transporter-18 is a pathfinder spacecraft for Project Suncatcher, the AI constellation that Google plans to build and operate in low Earth orbit (LEO).

This satellite will help the project team determine how tensor processing units (TPUs) — Google chips that are core Suncatcher hardware — perform in the space environment. Of particular importance are how the TPUs withstand space radiation, and how efficiently the heat they generate is dissipated.

Another company with AI data center ambitions is flying on Transporter-18 as well: Cowboy Space has put its Reason-1 satellite on the Falcon 9.

"Its job is to prove out power beaming: using a high-power laser to transfer energy from low Earth orbit to a receiver on the ground," Cowboy Space said of Reason-1 in a Sept. 28 X post. "If you want to build data centers in space, you have to master the optical systems between orbit and Earth. This is where that journey begins."

Transporter-18 will also launch Starfish Space's first Otter servicing satellite.

"This is a big moment for Starfish Space," the Washington-based company said via X on Sept. 24. "We've spent years developing, iterating, and proving out the key technologies required for affordable, available satellite servicing. Now we’re launching Otters, putting our satellite servicing vehicles to work for customers in orbit."

The rest of the 130 payloads are a diverse lot, consisting of "cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and two spacecraft with reentry vehicles and four orbital transfer vehicles carrying 41 of those payloads to be deployed at a later time," SpaceX wrote in its Transporter-18 mission description.

Transporter-18 won't set a record for most payloads launched at once, but it will come close. The current mark is 143, sent on SpaceX's Transporter-1 mission in January 2021.

If all goes according to plan on today's launch, the Falcon 9's first stage will come back to Vandenberg for a landing about 7.5 minutes after liftoff. It will be the 25th flight for this particular booster, according to SpaceX.

The rocket's upper stage will continue powering its way to LEO, where it will deploy the 130 payloads over a roughly 11-minute stretch starting 54.5 minutes after launch.