The National Reconnaissance Office sent its 11th batch of small, reconnaissance satellites into low Earth orbit Monday morning. These are believed to be Starshield satellites, a government variant of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, though the NRO hasn’t confirmed this.
The intelligence-gathering organization tasked SpaceX to deploy an unspecified number of satellites into low Earth orbit as part of its constellation called the “proliferated architecture.”
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:38 a.m. PDT (1:38 p.m. EDT / 1738 UTC).
SpaceX launched the mission using Falcon 9 first-stage booster B108, which was making its 18th flight after launching missions including NASA’s Crew-7, three Earth-science missions (PACE, EarthCARE and TRACERS) and two ride share missions (Transporter-10 and Transporter-13).
About 7.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX returned B1081 to Landing Zone 4, nearby the launch pad. It was the 29th recovery at LZ-4 and the 509th booster landing for SpaceX to date.
The NRO began 2025 with a run of four launches carrying satellites for its proliferated architecture constellation between January and April. The agency said it will continue to grow this reconnaissance system in the coming years in an effort to make it both more robust and more resilient against 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, all of the launches supporting this constellation have flown from Vandenberg Space Force Base with a majority landing on the drone ship, Of Course I Still Love You.
NROL-48 was only the second proliferated architecture mission, after NROL-57, that will see the booster return to LZ-4. This suggests there are fewer satellites aboard this mission, which would allow enough performance to return to the launch site instead of using a downrange drone ship. Based on publicly available tracking data NROL-57, carried 11 satellites, compared to up to 22 satellites on missions that featured a drone ship landing.
