The most recent set of Starshield satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office were launched Thursday night in SpaceX’s first West Coast Falcon 9 launch of the year.
At 7:53 p.m. PST (10:53 p.m. EST, 0353 UTC), the NROL-153 mission took off from pad 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base. SpaceX launched into orbit for the fourth time this year.
This mission’s Falcon 9 first stage booster, SpaceX fleet tail number B1071, made its 22nd flight. Three ridesharing missions (Transporter-8, Transporter-9, and Bandwagon-2) as well as four NRO missions (NROL-87, NROL-85, and NROL-146), NASA’s SWOT spacecraft, and thirteen Starlink flights were among its prior flights.
B1071 made the 116th landing for OCISLY and the 394th booster landing to date when it touched down on the droneship, “Of Course I Still Love You,” just over eight minutes after liftoff.
The first launch of the year for the NRO’s constellation of proliferated architecture satellites was the NROL-153 mission. It mentioned at least five missions scheduled for 2025 and performed six launches with Falcon 9 rockets in 2024:
- NROL-153
- NROL-57
- NROL-192
- NROL-48
- NROL145
“The NRO continues to build and fortify the largest government constellation in history, with proliferated launches continuing through 2028,” the agency wrote in a prelaunch press kit. “Having hundreds of NRO satellites on orbit is invaluable to our nation and our partners. They will provide greater revisit rates, increasing coverage, faster delivery of information, and ultimately help us to more quickly deliver what our customers need.”
In a number of locations, the NRO has stated that controlling hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit is a key priority. The director of the NRO’s Mission Operations Directorate, Dr. T.J. Lincoln, stated at last month’s Space Force Association Spacepower Conference that the agency is increasingly turning to automation to better manage the increasingly complex systems.
Lincoln was joined on the panel by Col. Eric Zarybnisky, director of the U.S. Space Force’s Office of Space Launch, who also stated that automation will speed up the transfer of information from intel collected in space to those who need it most.
Despite neither company’s official confirmation, it is thought that the proliferated architecture constellation is made up of Starshield satellites, which are produced by SpaceX in collaboration with Northrop Grumman.
A government version of the commercial Starlink satellites is called Starshield.
