“Falcon 9 Soars: SpaceX Unveils Starshield Satellites for National Reconnaissance Office”

SpaceX accomplished its initial Falcon 9 launch on the West Coast for the year Thursday evening, featuring the latest set of Starshield satellites intended for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The NROL-153 mission lifted off from pad 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:53 p.m. PST (10:53 p.m. EST, 0353 UTC), marking SpaceX’s fourth orbital launch this year.



The Falcon 9 first stage booster utilized for this mission, tail number B1071 in SpaceX’s fleet, was launched for the 22nd occasion. Its earlier flights included three rideshare missions (Transporter-8, Transporter-9, and Bandwagon-2), four missions for the NRO (NROL-87, NROL-85, and NROL-146), NASA’s SWOT spacecraft, and 13 Starlink missions.

Slightly over eight minutes post liftoff, B1071 successfully landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ representing the 116th landing for OCISLY and the 394th booster landing thus far.

The NROL-153 mission initiated the year’s activities to support the NRO’s proliferated satellite architecture. It accomplished six launches with Falcon 9 rockets in 2024 and projected at least five missions scheduled for 2025:

• NROL-153
• NROL-57
• NROL-192
• NROL-48
• NROL-145

“The NRO is actively developing and strengthening the largest governmental constellation in history, with continued proliferated launches up to 2028,” the agency noted in a prelaunch press kit. “Having hundreds of NRO satellites in orbit is crucial for our country and our allies. They will enable enhanced revisit intervals, expanded coverage, quicker information delivery, and ultimately assist us in more efficiently providing what our clients require.”

The transition to overseeing hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit has been emphasized by the NRO as a primary objective across various forums. During last month’s Space Force Association Spacepower Conference, Dr. T.J. Lincoln, director of the NRO’s Mission Operations Directorate, stated that the NRO is progressively transitioning towards automation to better manage the increasingly intricate systems.

Col. Eric Zarybnisky, director of the U.S. Space Force’s Office of Space Launch and a fellow panelist with Lincoln, added that automation would also accelerate the transfer of data from intelligence collected in orbit to those who require it urgently.

“It’s not merely about proliferation—it’s about how we can deliver data more swiftly. The NRO has historically been recognized for disseminating data within hours, maybe minutes. We need to achieve seconds,” Zarybnisky stated. “We must ensure decision-makers and military personnel receive the information within seconds, and automation, [artificial intelligence], and [machine learning] are crucial to accomplishing that.”

The proliferated architecture constellation is believed to comprise Starshield satellites, constructed by SpaceX in collaboration with Northrop Grumman, although neither firm has publicly affirmed that these satellites constitute the constellation.

Starshield represents a governmental variant of the commercial Starlink satellites.