The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is now talking openly about the cargo it flew on SpaceX’s Starfall reentry capsule. In an X post on October 26, AFRL said that “with support from SpaceX, the AFRL agile cargo pods were recovered after splashdown” in the Pacific Ocean.
What flew
Starfall launched on a Falcon 9 as part of SpaceX’s Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on October 20. It carried several AFRL-built cargo pods meant to test how military equipment can travel through space and back to Earth.
- Each pod held sensors that tracked temperature through launch, reentry and splashdown, along with the shock and vibration loads on the cargo.
- For this first Starfall mission, AFRL packed representative items such as medical equipment, food ration packs and other survival kit.
- AFRL also did a fit check of a UNI-PAC III life raft inside Starfall, which could fly on future tests.
“This was a critical achievement to demonstrate the potential of Rocket Cargo delivery for point-to-point rapid global mobility for the Future Force,” said Adam Remaly, director of AFRL’s Technology Transition Office, as quoted by Space.com.
About Starfall
SpaceX has said little about the disc-shaped capsule, which first flew quietly on a Falcon 9 in June. According to an FAA environmental assessment cited by Space.com, it is about 3.1 meters (10.2 feet) across, can return up to about 1,000 kg (2,200 pounds) of cargo from orbit, and uses a carbon fiber heat shield, compressed gas thrusters for attitude control and parachutes for landing. AFRL will use the data from this flight in its broader Rocket Cargo work.