It turns out Transporter-9 deployment didn’t go as smoothly as planned for some passengers. Momentus ($MNTS) announced last week that three of the five satellites it had carried failed to deploy from the third-party deployer it used for the mission, and are now presumed lost.
“Based on the results of a detailed investigation undertaken, the company does not believe those satellites were released from the third-party deployer system,” the company said in a statement.
What’s lost? The three satellites that did not deploy, according to previous reports on the mission manifest and a little power of deduction, are:
- The AMAN-1 EO satellite for Poland’s SatRev
- JINJUSat-1, an EO satellite for South Korea’s CONTEC
- The Picacho tech demonstrator for Lunasonde
SatRev is having particularly bad luck on the road to orbit—this is the second AMAN satellite that never made it, after version 1 flew on a failed Virgin Orbit launch this year. Two IoT demo satellites for Hello Space successfully deployed to orbit.
Mea culpa: Momentus didn’t use its in-house Vigoride tug for Transporter-9 because the satellites flying didn’t need extra delta-V or maneuvering after launch. Instead, it tapped an unidentified third-party deployer. Momentus and SpaceX are still working on investigating the cause of the failed deployment.
