A South Korean spy satellite and a collection of other spacecraft for various customers shared a Falcon 9 rocket ride into orbit early Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, hours after a celebration for the newest military branch’s fifth birthday.

The two-stage rocket from SpaceX lifted off at 3:34 a.m.

Eight minutes later, the rocket’s first-stage booster returned to Vandenberg, successfully completing its 21st launch and landing. 

In addition to the normal rumbling created by the rocket’s departure, sonic booms loudly sounded the first-stage booster’s return to Earth, and awakened some on the Central Coast.

SpaceX confirmed the mission achieved “nominal orbit insertion,” a key milestone for getting the payloads where they need to go. 

Dubbed Bandwagon-2, the purpose of the launch involved the delivery of South Korea’s third satellite for the 425 Project constellation for that country’s Agency for Defense Development,. 

A number of other payloads also hitched a ride for assorted commercial and international customers, including for Arrow Science and Technology, Exolaunch, HawkEye 360, Maverick Space Systems, Sidus Space, Tomorrow Companies Inc., True Anomaly and Think Orbital.

The Bandwagon series of missions is one of two rideshare programs offered by SpaceX to help small satellite operators get their spacecraft into orbit. 

The firm’s Transporter missions place payloads in a sun-synchronous orbit while Bandwagon delivers to a mid-inclination orbit. 

“The mid-inclination orbit fills in gaps for our customers that want to expand their coverage or complete unique mission objectives because changing the inclination of an orbit changes the way that a satellite moves around the Earth,”said Veronica “Ronnie” Foreman from SpaceX

A mid-inclination orbit also provides a higher “revisit rate,” which means it flies over the same point on Earth more often than other types of orbits, Foreman added. 

Some payloads actually had more than one spacecraft. For example, ExoLaunch, based in Germany and the United States, boasted having 22 customer satellites, including 15 Cubesats and seven microsatellites. 

The firm created a special satellite deployment system for the Cubesats and microsatellites.

The assorted craft for ExoLaunch on the Bandwagon-2 mission originated from countries including Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Djibouti, Finland, Mongolia, and the United States.

ExoLaunch later confirmed successful deployment of the 22 satellites it was tasked with delivering. 

Liftoff occurred hours after the U.S. Space Force marked its fifth anniversary, with the celebration including a birthday cake at Vandenberg.

The Dec. 20, 2019, formation of Space Force added the first new military branch in decades to the Defense Department.

For the most part, Space Force moved existing space-related units and programs from the Army, Air Force and Navy under the umbrella of the new military branch.

Since the creation, those in Space Force have been designated as Guardians to go along with their Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen colleagues from other branches.

Several installations, including the former Vandenberg Air Force Base, have been renamed to note the Space Force involvement.

However, Air Force presence remains plentiful at Vandenberg. Much like the Navy provides key functions for the Marines Corps, the Air Force supplies security forces, firefighting and other essential roles at Vandenberg.

While Space Force is five years old, Vandenberg’s launch mission is much older. The base has been send up rockets and missiles since Dec. 16, 1958.

Saturday’s launch also marked the 50th liftoff of 2024 from Vandenberg, where all but five involved the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.