Satellogic launches first Merlin satellite on Falcon 9 from Vandenberg

Satellogic has announced the successful launch of its first Merlin satellite, alongside three other spacecraft, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on 1 October. The company (NASDAQ: SATL) confirmed the launch in a press release on 2 October.

The payload comprised Merlin.01 — first of the new Merlin constellation — plus two NewSat Mark VI and one NewSat Mark V craft. All four were delivered into sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit and have made contact with the company’s ground-station network, with good health reports for all subsystems, the company said.

Merlin is designed as a global detection layer for theatre-scale monitoring. Its satellites carry 10-band payloads aligned with the Sentinel programme, with 1m-class imagery and a 170 km swath, giving daily global remapping capability. Onboard AI processing is intended to deliver alerts within 30 minutes, while inter-satellite links allow Merlin to cue NewSat Mark VI satellites in real time for 50 cm follow-up imagery without routing through a ground station.

“Merlin is designed to process every pixel with AI directly onboard, then use inter-satellite links to direct NewSat VIs to capture what it finds in higher resolution,” said Alan Kharsansky, Satellogic’s chief technology officer. Merlin.01 is now in its launch and early orbit phase; payload testing begins mid-October 2026, with full operational capacity targeted for the second half of 2027.

The departure matches SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which carried 130 payloads into orbit, according to the Times of Central Asia.

Sources: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/10/02/3373776/0/en/satellogic-announces-successful-launch-of-first-merlin-satellite.html ; https://timesca.com/two-central-asian-satellites-reach-orbit-on-spacex-rocket/