It wasn’t a mysterious drone that lit up the night sky of Florida’s Space Coast on Monday evening. Rather a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, launching and lifting a Lockheed Martin-built GPS III satellite into orbit for the U.S. Space Force.
Dubbed the Rapid Response Trailblazer (RRT-1), the mission was only described as a U.S. National Security Space Launch (NSSL). It had been originally scheduled to lift off last Friday but was delayed due to high winds.
“The mission successfully achieved a complex effort across multiple Space Force organizations to pull an existing GPS III satellite from storage, accelerate integration and launch vehicle readiness, and rapidly process for launch,” the Space Systems Command (SSC) and Space Operations Command (SCoP) announced.
The satellite was the seventh of 10 designed and built by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Space Force.
“This was an amazing effort across multiple teams and agencies,” said Col. Andrew Menschner, Delta 31 mission commander. “This launch showed our ability to respond quickly to an operational need, such as an on-orbit vehicle failure of the GPS constellation, as well as demonstrating our willingness to challenge traditional timelines associated with launches in response to a realistic scenario.”
This marked the 126th launch carried out by SpaceX just this year, and the first exercise of trailblazer capabilities for the GPS constellation.
Launches From Vandenberg
Just over a dozen hours after a Falcon 9 took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, another SpaceX Falcon 9 was headed to orbit from the Vandenberg Spaceport in California. It supported the NROL-149 mission and was the 49th space launch and missile test from the Space Force’s West Coast Spaceport and Test Range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in 2024.
The mission also had a veil of secrecy as it carried an undisclosed number of satellites – reported to be the Starshield, the U.S. government’s variant of the SpaceX Starlink.
Tuesday’s launch also follows Friday’s Starlink 11-mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) on Friday, in which a Falcon 9 rocket carried 22 of the satellites to orbit. It was also the ninth mission for the first stage booster, which carries the liquid fuel used by the rocket during liftoff and as the Falcon 9 reaches low-Earth orbit to deploy the payload.
Vandenberg Expansion
SpaceX has announced it would employ its second launch site –Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) – at Vandenberg SFB, to allow the number of West Coast liftoffs to be increased to as many as 100 annually. As a result, the base has begun an environmental assessment.
“Under the Proposed Action, the Air Force would authorize Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch and landing operations at Space Launch Complex-6, including modifications to SLC-6 required to support those operations and construction of landing zones,” The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.
It was in April 2023, that SpaceX signed an agreement with the base to SLC-6. It has called for the existing Horizontal integration facility (HIF) located north of SLC-6 to be modified into a hangar for use by SpaceX to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy operations, the paper added.
SLC-6 previously supported the Delta IV vehicle family but it has remained vacant since the final Delta IV Heavy launch on Sept. 24, 2022.
The Space Force has supported nearly 140 missions between Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg this year, and at least eight more are scheduled to be completed on the West Coast before the end of this calendar year.
