SpaceX launched a national security mission on Friday night from Vandenberg Space Command, commissioned by the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Intelligence agencies described the top-secret mission as “the second launch of NRO’s diffuse architecture, which will provide nationally significant space ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).”
The Falcon 9 rocket supporting the mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at 8:14 pm PDT (11:14 pm EDT, 0314 UTC), the start of a two-hour window.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1081, was the eighth launch of the SpaceX vehicle, whose previous missions have included the Crew 7 astronaut mission to the International Space Station, two climate monitoring satellites (NASA’s PACE and the European Space Agency’s EarthCARE), and two Starlink flights.
A little over eight minutes after launch, B1081 landed on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You.” This was OCISLY’s 95th booster landing and the 326th booster landing ever.
Proliferation of buildings
The mission was the second launch of NRO’s so-called “dispersed architecture,” following the launch of the NROL-146 mission in May. As Reuters reported earlier this year, the satellites are based on the StarShield satellite bus, built by SpaceX in partnership with Northrop Grumman.
In a statement to Spaceflight Now, the NRO 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 the systems, our contractual relationships with those companies, the specific activities of those companies, or the locations where NRO systems are built.”
The agency also declined to say how many satellites are in the missions or what orbits they are in. Speaking at a space symposium in Colorado this year, NRO principal deputy director Dr. Troy Mainke said there will be “approximately six such launches” this year.
These missions were not procured as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 task order because the NRO needed to move these missions forward before Phase 3 task order missions were assigned.
“NRO partnered with assured access to USSF Space Systems Command’s space team in Phase 3 acquisitions, inspiring the development of Phase 3 Lane 1 as a means to procure flexible launch solutions with customizable mission assurances,” an NRO spokesperson said in a statement. “When considering launch cadence and the need for customizable mission assurances, NRO recognized the need for a bridge between Phase 2 and Phase 3 Lane 1. As a result, some missions were procured outside of NSSL. NSSL has been and will continue to be NRO’s primary mechanism for procurement of launch services.”
