There have been three missions flown on Falcon 9 that belong to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The first was in 2017, the second in 2020, and most recent in 2022, in fact, the NRO’s first launch this year, NROL-87 was from California to a sun-synchronous orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Vandenberg Space Force base is known for its easy accessibility to polar orbits. It’s also known for fog.
“For sixty years, the NRO has developed, acquired, launched, and operated the satellites that are the foundation for America’s advantage and strength in space.” Twenty-nine of their missions have launched out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in this timeframe. “The NRO’s hybrid overhead architecture designed to provide global coverage against a wide range of intelligence requirements, carry out research and development efforts, and assist emergency and disaster-relief efforts in the U.S. and around the world.” But the actual locations of the satellites are under wraps due to National Security.
SpaceX’s goal is to put humanity on Mars and to do that, reusable rockets are a must because access to space is too costly. Imagine if 747s weren’t performing multiple flights, and after the first flight they were scrapped, the ticket prices would be astronomical! That’s how rockets are — well, most.
In 2015, SpaceX became the first company to land an orbital-class rocket. In 2022, they remain the only company to land orbital-class rockets. They’ve even flown one eleven times; that’s 11x boosters they didn’t have to build! The rest invest resources into a vehicle for one launch and descend to a location in the ocean known as the rocket graveyard. SpaceX has made landing and reusing rockets so routine that it’s visually strange to see a clean, brand new booster vertical at the launch pad.
Considering that used boosters are a new option for customers, some are wary and prefer to go with new ones even though they cost more. The NRO chose a new Falcon 9 Full Thrust version (pre-Block 5) for their maiden launch with SpaceX in 2017. Then the NRO, seemingly more comfortable with the option, chose a 4x flown booster on their second launch, followed by a new Block-5 for this mission.
This is an ambitious year for Falcon 9 because the goal is to launch one rocket every week of 2022; that’s right, possibly 52 launches! In a tweet, Elon Musk wrote, “If things go well, Falcon will launch about once a week on average in 2022, delivering ~2/3 of all Earth payload to orbit.” The ‘~2/3 of Earth payload’ is important as it’s the amount of payload that matters, not so much the number of launches.
It seems that every SpaceX launch features a new milestone. Usually, it is a first for the industry, a development test such as fairing recovery, flying civilians aboard Crew Dragon, two launches within 24 hours, you name it. So, it is no surprise that the launch of NROL-87 introduced a new milestone for the industry. Respected aerospace reporter and author Eric Berger tweeted, “The Falcon 9 rocket has now flown more consecutive successful missions, 111, than any orbital rocket in history.”
At the time this was written, SpaceX had launched a Falcon 9 mission about every five days in 2022.
