SpaceX conducted its first West Coast Falcon 9 launch of the year, which will feature the latest batch of Starshield satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The NROL-153 mission is the first launch of the year for the NRO’s proliferated architecture satellite constellation.
Dr. T.J. Lincoln, the director of the NRO’s Mission Operations Directorate at a December meeting at Space Force Association Spacepower Conference, said that the NRO is increasingly moving towards automation in order to better mange the increasingly complex systems.
“The good thing about automation, at least with the proliferated, is it’s being baked in early on. So as the ops lead for the NRO, I’m demanding those things are built into the system because there’s no way to operate multiple hundreds of satellites the same way we do today,” Lincoln said. “The mission management has to happen, the duty cycle tasking has to happen, the re-tasking has to happen automated, with humans on the loop to be able to tweak that to make sure we’re meeting those operational successful needs that we have to.”
The history of launches total six launches using Falcon 9 rockets in 2024 and listed at least five missions planned for 2025:
- 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.”
SpaceX to launch NROL-153 mission Thursday
SpaceX is targeting Thursday, January 9 for a Falcon 9 launch of the NROL-153 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff is targeted for 7:52 p.m. PT. If needed, a backup opportunity is available on Friday, January 10 starting at 7:34 p.m. PT.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about ten minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.
This is the seventh batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office to provide imaging and other reconnaissance capabilities.
This will be the 22nd flight of the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, Transporter-8, Transporter-9, NROL-146, Bandwagon-2 and 13 Starlink missions. Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
