Following stage separation, first stage booster returned to Earth and landed on a droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean around nine minutes after launch, marking its sixteenth successful recovery.
NRO aims to quadruple number of spacecraft in orbit with smaller, more numerous satellites for faster delivery of crucial intelligence.
SpaceX has been a leader in reusable rockets and has made significant strides in reducing cost of spaceflight through Starlink broadband constellation.
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying classified payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on May 22, 2024.
The launch took place at 4 a.m. Eastern time and was not broadcasted live due to sensitive nature of payloads.
This marked the fifth launch for the NRO by SpaceX and the sixteenth flight for this particular first-stage booster.
On May 22, 2024, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying classified payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This marked the fifth launch for the NRO by SpaceX and the 16th flight for this particular first-stage booster, which previously launched missions such as NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, Transporter-8, Transporter-9, and nine Starlink missions. The launch took place at 4 a.m. Eastern time and was not broadcasted live due to the sensitive nature of the payloads.
Following stage separation, the first stage booster returned to Earth and landed on a droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean around nine minutes after launch, marking its 16th successful recovery. The NRO has not disclosed how many satellites were launched or the projected size of its new constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman.
The NRO aims to quadruple the number of spacecraft in orbit with smaller, more numerous satellites that will allow for far more frequent revisits of critical areas, leading to faster delivery of crucial intelligence. This strategy is known as the NRO's proliferated architecture.
SpaceX has been a leader in reusable rockets and has made significant strides in reducing the cost of spaceflight through its Starlink broadband constellation, which currently consists of 36 launches out of a planned 52 for the year. The company's success is due to its ability to recover and reuse first-stage boosters, making space travel more accessible and affordable.
