Three satellites launched by SpaceX’s Transporter in November failed to deploy, including one from the company, which had previously said its satellite was in orbit and operational. Momentus announced on December 5 that three of the five satellites it flew in the November 11 Transporter-9 launch failed to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper assembly. The company used a third-party deployment instead of its own Vigoride tug. He said the launch of Turkish company Hello Space’s Hello Test 1 and 2 satellites has been confirmed.

“Momentus cannot confirm that the remaining three satellites were deployed for three other customers, and based on detailed investigation results, the company does not believe that these satellites were removed from the third-party deployment system,” Momentus said.

The company did not mention the names of these three satellites in the announcement. In previous statements, the company defined satellites as follows: AMAN-1, JINJUSat-1 And Pikachoand a company representative confirmed this manifesto on December 7. Picacho was a 1U cubesat developed by the startup Lunasonde in Tucson, Arizona. The company planned to use Picacho to demonstrate the technology in its plans to map underground mines and groundwater resources using very low-frequency radio waves.

Lunasonde stated that the satellite was in orbit and operational after launch. Jeremiah Pate, Lunasonde’s founder and CEO, said in a Dec. 1 article in the Arizona Daily Star that the company received telemetry confirming that Picacho had set up its main antenna, a tape measure-like device about four meters long.

“The worst thing for us is that this large antenna has been deployed, and this so-called deployment has not happened for several days,” Pate said in the article, which gave no other details about Pikachu’s status.

Pate also posted on social media that the satellite was in orbit. “Lunasonde is excited to have our Picacho satellite now in orbit after a flawless launch,” he wrote on LinkedIn. Neither he nor Lunasonde provided any other information about the satellite.

The company did not respond to messages about Picacho’s condition dated December 7 and 8. On December 7, Pate posted on LinkedIn that the company was arranging for a mid-2024 launch of the 6U cubesat at San Xavier as part of the SpaceX Transporter-11 mission. He did not say whether the company was working directly with SpaceX or through a supplier such as Momentus to arrange the launch.

If Pikacho If it had not been deployed from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, as Momentus noted, it would no longer be in orbit. This upper stage performed a deorbit maneuver and returned approximately an hour after the last of the 90 payloads were scheduled to be deployed.

Picacho, as well as AMAN-1 and JINJUSat-1, are not listed in the Space-Track database maintained by the US Space Force. But many payloads from this launch still don’t have an official ID.

“Momentus acknowledges and appreciates SpaceX for its work and cooperation in providing information necessary for our ongoing investigation into the possible root cause of the issues,” Momentus said in a statement regarding the apparent deployment error. said. “Momentus is also in constant communication with our customers.”

JINJUSat-1 It was developed by South Korean company Contec for Jinju City, Korea Testing Laboratory and Gyeongsang National University. These organizations did not comment on the loss of the satellite. AMAN-1 It was built by Polish company SatRev for the Omani government, and the company has not provided an update on the status of the satellite. AMAN-1 was built as a replacement for AMAN, which was also developed for Oman by SatRev. The original AMAN satellite was lost when Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne malfunctioned in January.