NRO, SpaceX to launch reconnaissance satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg SFB – Spaceflight Now

The National Reconnaissance Office within the United States is getting ready to ship its eleventh batch of small, reconnaissance satellites into low Earth orbit Monday morning. These are believed to be Starshield satellites, a authorities variant of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, although the NRO hasn’t confirmed this.

The intelligence-gathering group tasked SpaceX to deploy an unspecified variety of satellites into low Earth orbit as a part of its constellation referred to as the “proliferated architecture.”

SpaceX is focusing on liftoff of its Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:38 a.m. PDT (1:38 p.m. EDT / 1738 UTC).

Spaceflight Now could have reside protection starting about half-hour previous to liftoff.

SpaceX plans to launch the mission utilizing Falcon 9 first-stage booster B1081. This will probably be its 18th flight after launching missions together with NASA’s Crew-7, three Earth-science missions (PACE, EarthCARE and TRACERS) and two experience share missions (Transporter-10 and Transporter-13).

Roughly 7.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX plans to land B1081 at Landing Zone 4, close by the launch pad. If profitable, this would be the twenty ninth restoration at LZ-4 and the 509th booster touchdown for SpaceX to this point.

The NRO started 2025 with a run of 4 launches carrying satellites for its proliferated structure constellation between January and April. The company stated it can proceed to develop this reconnaissance system within the coming years in an effort to make it each extra sturdy and extra resilient towards interference from adversaries.

“The NRO continues to build and fortify the largest government constellation in history, with proliferated launches continuing through 2029,” the NRO wrote. “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.”

So far, the entire launches supporting this constellation have flown from Vandenberg Space Force Base with a majority touchdown on the drone ship, Of Course I Still Love You.

NROL-48 will probably be solely the second proliferated structure mission, after NROL-57, that may see the booster return to LZ-4. This suggests there are fewer satellites aboard this mission, which might permit sufficient efficiency to return to the launch website as a substitute of utilizing a downrange drone ship. Based on publicly accessible monitoring information NROL-57, carried 11 satellites, in comparison with as much as 22 satellites on missions that featured a drone ship touchdown.