Update April 20, 9 a.m. EDT: SpaceX landed the booster on the droneship.
America’s spy satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), launched its third mission in eight days on Sunday, April 20. The mission featured another batch of satellites to support its proliferated architecture constellation in low Earth orbit.
The satellites, believed to be Starshield satellites built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Liftoff of the NROL-145 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at for 5:29 a.m. PDT (8:29 a.m. EDT, 1229 UTC).
The Falcon 9 first stage booster being used on this mission was tail number B1082 in the SpaceX fleet. This was its 12th launch after previously supporting the flights of USSF-62, OneWeb Launch 20 and nine batches of Starlink satellites.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1082 landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ It marked the 126th booster landing on OCISLY and the 432nd booster landing to date.
The mission followed the April 12 NROL-192 launch of 22 satellites for the proliferated architecture and the NROL-174 mission, which launched on a Minotaur rocket April 16 and placed two payloads into orbit, according to Jonathan McDowell, who maintains a database of spaceflight activities.
The NRO doesn’t publicly comment on how many satellites are aboard its launches, but the number of payloads can be identified when legally-required orbital tracking data is released.
NROL-145 will be the 10th overall launch for the proliferated architecture constellation and the fourth such launch in 2025. In its prelaunch press kit, the NRO suggested that there would be at least one more launch supporting this agency initiative, which is listed as NROL-48.
A launch date for that upcoming mission hasn’t been announced.
