On an early foggy California morning, Tuesday, December 17 at 5:19 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 launched the NROL-149 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Photos by Satnews
This was the 22nd flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, DART, SDA-0B, Iridium OneWeb, Transporter-7, NROL-113, NROL-167, and 14 Starlink missions.
The mission, called NROL-149, “is the sixth launch of NRO’s proliferated architecture, eighth launch of 2024 and last launch of the year!” the agency said in an X post on Sunday, December 15.
“Proliferated architecture” refers to a “new paradigm for assets the NRO is putting on orbit,” NRO officials wrote in a description of the previous mission in the series, NROL-126, which launched on November 30.
Those assets, the description added, are “numerous, smaller satellites designed for capability and resilience.” We don’t know much beyond that; the NRO, which operates the United States’ fleet of spy satellites, tends not to provide many details about its spacecraft or their activities.
On November 30. NROL-126 was the fifth launch of the NRO’s proliferated architecture of imaging satellites built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. SpaceX launched the first four batches of NRO satellites to low Earth orbit in May, June, September and October.
The mission emblem’s blue circles artistically depict a proliferated constellation of satellites, reflecting the new paradigm for assets the NRO is putting on orbit. The constellation design also suggests an eye’s iris, reflecting the NRO’s reconnaissance mission — seeing Earth from the perspective of stars. Additional design elements include the limitless horizon and the path to orbit with a four-point star. The tagline, “Strength in Numbers,” describes the NRO’s new strategy of a proliferated overhead architecture — numerous, smaller satellites designed for capability and resilience.