After a one-day delay due to Federal Aviation Administration airspace concerns, NASA successfully launched its TRACERS mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday morning, sending twin satellites into orbit to study how Earth’s magnetic field interacts with the solar wind.
Liftoff occurred at 11:13 a.m. from Space Launch Complex 4 East aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. About eight minutes later, the rocket’s first-stage booster — tail number B1081 — landed safely back at Landing Zone 4, producing a sonic boom audible in parts of Santa Barbara County. This marked the booster’s 16th flight and the 478th successful landing of a SpaceX booster overall.
The Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) are designed to collect near-simultaneous measurements of solar wind and its impact on Earth’s magnetosphere, helping scientists better predict space weather phenomena that can affect satellites, communications systems, and power grids.
The launch was originally scheduled for Tuesday, July 22, but was scrubbed just 45 seconds before liftoff. According to the FAA, a regional power outage in Santa Barbara disrupted telecommunications at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center, which manages Pacific airspace. The FAA postponed the launch “to ensure the safety of the traveling public.”
This mission marks the 90th Falcon 9 launch of 2025 and is part of a rideshare carrying seven other small satellites.More than 4,600 viewers tuned in to SpaceX’s livestream of the launch, which included commentary from Will Robinson-Smith, who answered viewer questions and walked audiences through key flight milestones. These included the moment of “max Q” — the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure — as well as stage separation, second-stage ignition, and the Falcon 9’s reentry and booster landing burn. As of this writting, there have been more than 80K views on the livestream, which can be accessed here.
