SpaceX launches several NRO satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX launched a national security mission on behalf of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday night. The spy agency described the classified mission as “the second launch of the NRO’s deployed architecture, which provides critical space-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) services to the nation.”

The Falcon 9 rocket supporting this mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at the opening of a two-hour window, at 8:14 p.m. PDT (11:14 p.m. EDT, 0314 UTC).

The Falcon 9 first-stage booster rocket supporting this mission, tail number B1081 in the SpaceX fleet, blasted off for the eighth time. His previous missions have included launching the Crew-7 astronaut mission to the International Space Station, two climate monitoring satellites (NASA’s PACE and ESA’s EarthCARE) and two Starlink flights.

Just over eight minutes after takeoff, B1081 landed the drone, saying, “Of course I still love you.” It was OCISLY’s 95th landing and the 326th to date.

Diffuse architecture grows

This mission was the second launch of NRO’s so-called “proliferating structure”, following the launch of the NROL-146 mission in May. Reports from Reuters earlier this year indicated that these satellites are based on the Starshield satellite bus built by SpaceX in partnership with Northrop Grumman.

In a statement to Spaceflight Now, the National Reconnaissance Organization said:

“NRO systems are designed, built, and operated by the NRO. As a matter of national security, we do not discuss the companies involved in building our systems, our contractual relationships with them, their specific activities, or the locations where NRO systems are built.

The agency also refused to confirm the number of satellites on these missions as well as their orbits. In a speech she delivered at this year’s Space Symposium in Colorado, There will be “about a half-dozen of these launches” this year, said Dr. Troy Mink, principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Organization.

This mission was not purchased as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase II mission order. This is because the NRO needed these missions to move forward before assigning the Phase III mission orders.

“NRO collaborated with the USSF Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space team on the Phase 3 acquisition and influenced the development of Phase 3, Track 1 – as a way to obtain flexible launch solutions with customizable mission assurance,” an NRO spokesperson said in a statement. . “When considering the launch cadence and need for customizable mission assurance, the NRO recognized that we needed a bridge between Phase 2 and Phase 3 – Track 1. This resulted in some missions being acquired outside of the NSSL. The NSSL was, and will continue to be, the NRO’s primary mechanism for sourcing services launch.”