Will Robinson-Smith File: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is vertical at Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of the launch of the Starlink 9-10 mission on Nov. 8, 2024. Image: SpaceX SpaceX will debut a new class of rideshare mission on Sunday with the launch of its first Twilight flight. The mission is described by the company as flying to a “dawn-dusk Sun-synchronous orbit” after departing from Vandenberg Space Force Base. As of Saturday afternoon, SpaceX hasn’t announced the total number of payloads flying onboard, but it did list 40 deployment events on its launch timeline. Spacecraft will be jettisoned from the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage starting roughly an hour after liftoff and concluding more than 2.5 hours into the mission. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 5:20 a.m. PST (8:20 a.m. EST / 1320 UTC). The rocket will fly on a southerly trajectory after takeoff. Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.  It will be the fifth flight for one of SpaceX’s newer Falcon boosters, designated 1097. It previously launched three batches of Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites and the Sentinel-6B spacecraft. Roughly 7.5 minutes after liftoff, B1097 will touchdown at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4), adjacent to the launch pad. If successful, this will be the 32nd landing at this site and the 557th booster landing for SpaceX to date. Pandora, BlackCat, and SPARCS The Twilight mission will carry a trio of NASA spacecraft, including a spacecraft designed to study exoplanets called Pandora. This mission is spearheaded by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It uses a 17-inch-wide (45 cm) telescope jointly developed by Corning Incorporated and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to observe the atmosphere of exoplanets as they pass in front of their respective stars. Observations will be taken in both visible and infrared light. NASA said Pandora will look at each planet and its start 10 times “with each observation lasting a total of 24 hours.”  “The Pandora mission is a bold new chapter in exoplanet exploration,” said Daniel Apai, an astronomy and planetary science professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson where the mission’s operations center resides. “It is the first space telescope built specifically to study, in detail, starlight filtered through exoplanet atmospheres. Pandora’s data will help scientists interpret observations from past and current missions like NASA’s Kepler and Webb space telescopes. And it will guide future projects in their search for habitable worlds.” The observatory was one of four astrophysics missions tapped for further development under NASA’s new Pioneers program and will study 20 stars and 39 exoplanets over a five-year timeline. The Pandora mission has a budget cap of $20 million, according to a statement from NASA in 2021. The two other NASA-backed payloads, BlackCat and SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat) come from the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. Each CubeSat measures 11.8 by 7.8 by 3.9 inches (30 by 20 by 10 cm). BlackCAT is set to launch! This @NASA-funded mission led by @PSUScience, with contributions from @LosAlamosNatLab, will launch at 13:19 UTC this Sunday to hunt for some of the brightest, furthest, and oldest explosions in our Universe: BlackCAT (the Black Hole Coded Aperture… pic.twitter.com/2XZvhDi6CJ