Multiple Indian payloads launched by Space X’s Falcon 9
Indian private space companies Dhruva Space and SatLeo Labs successfully launched payloads via SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The mission included the LEAP-2 satellite and the TAPAS-1 thermal sensing CubeSat, marking a milestone for India's commercial space sector.
Why it matters
This demonstrates the growing capability of India's private space industry to integrate and deploy advanced satellite technology globally.
Multiple payloads developed by Indian companies were successfully deployed in orbit by Space X’s Falcon 9 in the early hours of October 2 from the Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, U.S.A., as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare mission.
Dhruva Space’s Launching Expeditions for Aspiring Payloads (LEAP-2), hosting multiple In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) missions, which includes a star tracker by France-based Sodern ArianeGroup, and TAPAS-1 by India-based Satleo Labs, were part of the Transporter-18 mission.
Dhruva Space stated that LEAP-2 was successfully deployed in orbit at 1 a.m. IST on October 2. It has undertaken the end-to-end launch integration of the LEAP-2 satellite with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle, building on its experience with LEAP-1 , where Dhruva Space became the first private Indian company to undertake the launch vehicle integration of its satellite in-house.
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