SpaceX launches several satellites for NRO from Vandenberg Space Base – SpaceFlightNow

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. EST, 0314 UTC).

The Falcon 9 first-stage booster supporting this mission, SpaceX’s fleet number B1081, launched for the eighth time. Its 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.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 touched down on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone spacecraft. This was the 95th landing of the OCISLY booster vehicle and the 326th landing to date.

The multiplying 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 companies associated with 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 procured as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 mission order. This is because the NRO needed these missions to move forward before task orders were assigned to Phase III.

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