Friday, December 6

SpaceX launches combination of NRO Starshield and Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 flight – Spaceflight Now

Nine Merlin 1D engines power the Falcon 9 rocket into space on the NROL-126 mission. Image: SpaceX.

SpaceX launched a mission early Saturday that blends national security satellites with those supporting its non-governmental Starlink satellite network.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, occurred at 12:10 a.m. PST (3:10 a.m. EST, 0810 UTC) on Saturday, Nov. 30, hours after the successful launch of the Starlink 6-65 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The National Reconnaissance Office billed the NROL-126 mission as the fifth launch of its so-called ‘proliferated architecture. This low Earth orbit constellation is believed to consist of Starshield satellites, a government-specific variant of the more public-facing Starlink satellites from SpaceX. In a twist, SpaceX said the mission also included 20 of its Starlink satellites.

Since Sept. 20, all the dedicated Starlink missions launching from VSFB have gone to an inclination of 53 degrees and included 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which featured Direct to Cell capabilities.

The NROL-126 mission followed the profile laid out by the previous missions supporting the proliferated architecture: heading to an inclination of 70 degrees. However, the inclusion of 20 Starlink satellites on the flight means there likely won’t be many Starshield satellites onboard the Falcon 9 rocket, but neither the NRO nor SpaceX have disclosed an exact number.

The largest volume of V2 Mini Starlink satellites launched at one time from VSFB was 23 on the Starlink 11-1 mission in August 2024.

When first announcing the agency’s proliferated architecture, the NRO said there would be six launches for the project by the end of 2024. Since then, they appear to have added two additional missions, NROL-153 and NROL-192, which are due to launch before the end of the year.

“To stay ahead of the competition and ensure it can continue to operate in a heightened threat environment, the NRO is modernizing its architecture in space and on the ground – delivering more capability faster with increased resilience,” the NRO wrote in a prelaunch press kit. “A greater number of satellites – large and small, government and commercial, in multiple orbits – will deliver an order of magnitude more signals and images than is available today.

“The NRO continues to build and fortify the largest government constellation in history – enabled by an especially dynamic 18-month period, ending late this year, in which approximately 12 missions will have launched, putting more than 100 payloads on orbit.”

Those missions are then listed below, including the launch dates for those which have already flown:

  • June 22, 2023 – NROL-68 (ULA – Delta 4 Heavy)
  • Sept. 10, 2023 – NROL-107/Silentbarker (ULA – Atlas 5 551)
  • March 21, 2024 – NROL-123 (Rocket Lab – Electron)
  • April 9, 2024 – NROL-70 (ULA – Delta 4 Heavy)
  • May 22, 2024 – NROL-146 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • June 28, 2024 – NROL-186 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • Sept. 5, 2024 – NROL-113 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • Oct. 24, 2024 – NROL-167 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • Nov. 30, 2024 – NROL-126 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • NET Dec. 2024 – NROL-149 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • NET Dec. 2024 – NROL-153 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)
  • NET Dec. 2024 – NROL-192 (SpaceX – Falcon 9)

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission was launching for the first time. The tail number is believed to be B1088. A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9 first stage booster landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. It marked the 111th booster landing on OCISLY and the 377th booster landing to date

Out of sight?

The announcement of the NROL-126 mission marks the second time that SpaceX published a web page for one of its Falcon 9 launches, but didn’t include a way for the public to watch liftoff live. The peculiar situation has so far only been implemented in the two most recent Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Those who navigate to the SpaceX main page can usually scroll to an upcoming launch and see a button stating “Watch” with a hyperlink leading to another page with more mission info and a link to the livestream. However, for NROL-126, the button states “Learn More” and leads to a mission page devoid of any livestream indications.

SpaceX presented a similar situation when it came to the launch of the Starlink 9-13 mission on  Nov. 24 from VSFB.

There were no prelaunch tweets leading up to that either flight and in both cases, SpaceX published a livestream on X, previously known as Twitter, after the rockets had left the launch pad.

source: spaceflightnow.com