Update October 14, 6:45 PM EDT (2245 UTC): SpaceX aborted Tuesday’s launch attempt.
Space development agency SpaceX is set to add 21 more satellites to its growing low Earth orbit constellation via the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket. This is the second of ten launches booked so far by SDA on the Falcon 9.
The T1TL-C mission is the second flight of what SDA calls its Trench 1 transport layer. It is the latest part of a satellite constellation called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).
“The mission we’ve been on for the last six and a half years is to provide capabilities to war fighters,” SDA Deputy Director Gurpatap Sandhu said at a prelaunch media roundtable in September.
“In 2019, when SDA stood down, [the goal] There were two things to do: one was to make sure that we could target beyond line of sight and be able to keep the threat, the emerging threat, in the warning missile track domain.
SpaceX aims to launch the T1TL-C mission as early as 4:03 p.m. PDT (7:03 p.m. EDT/2303 UTC) on Wednesday, Oct. 15 from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 4 East. The rocket will fly on a southern trajectory upon departure from the California coastline.
Spaceflight Now’s live coverage will begin approximately 30 minutes before liftoff.
SpaceX is using Falcon 9 first stage booster B1093 to launch this mission. Its most recent flight was SDA’s T1TL-B mission in September and it has also flown on five Starlink missions.
About nine minutes after takeoff, B1093 is scheduled to land on SpaceX’s drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’, which is located in the Pacific Ocean. This is SpaceX’s 49th flight from California so far this year.
enhancing military capabilities
The 21 satellites that flew on the T1TL-C mission were manufactured by Lockheed Martin. They will join the first 21 York Space System satellites launched on the T1TL-B mission, which are currently in orbit.
Those two companies, along with Northrop Grumman, were issued contracts to build this part of the PWSA satellite constellation, which will include a total of 126 satellites. Northrop Grumman’s satellites will fly on the upcoming T1TL-A mission, said Col. Ryan Heiserotte, division chief of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command in the Assured Access to Space Directorate, following the launch in September.
“The first three missions (A, B and C) are interchangeable as to the order of launch,” Hiserotte said in a statement to Spaceflight Now.
According to the SDA, Tranche 1 also includes what the SDA calls the tracking layer, which will include 28 satellites and four missile defense demonstration satellites, which are “equipped with optical communications terminals and Ka-band radio frequency receive/transmit capability.”
SDA plans to launch approximately one mission per month to support its group. After each launch, SDA will undergo initial testing and anticipate having these satellites in operational order for their early adopters within approximately four to six months.
This first constellation is “designed to serve as the initial warfighting capability for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) and provide regional persistence for Link-16 and Ka band military tactical communications, advanced missile tracking and missile warning, and beyond-sight targeting.”
Sandhu said the plan is that by January 2027, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the unified combatant command over the Indo-Pacific region of the world, will be able to begin reliably using the capabilities provided by the Trench 1 constellation.
“Space has always been a vague thing for people to understand and depend on. So the whole goal of that team is to integrate it into day-to-day operations, so that both the joint force can understand this capability and take advantage of it and the space force can also present these forces to the joint force through the space layer,” Sandhu said.
“It’s like any new capability coming into the fleet, it takes time and effort and experimentation and practice to get them all up to speed in order to start using it,” he said. “So, that’s our goal for the next two years, at least once we establish this regional capability.”
