The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has launched the latest in a series of satellites that comprise its proliferated space architecture, marking a change from its approach of fielding large satellites in higher orbits to placing more and smaller spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
The NROL-145 mission, the 10th batch of reconnaissance satellites in the proliferated architecture and the fourth batch this year, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in April 2025 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the NRO said in a news release. The agency has orbited more than 200 satellites during the past two years, “creating the largest and most capable government constellation on orbit in our nation’s history,” the release said. All told, the NRO plans about a dozen satellite launches in 2025, half of them contributing to the new proliferated architecture.
The NRO, a member of the U.S. intelligence community and an agency of the Department of Defense, conducts top secret intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
The mission is the first under a new task order designed to orbit national security satellites faster, in partnership with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command and the command’s Assured Access to Space organization. The Space Force also is fielding its own series of proliferated satellites under its rapid-deployment Space Development Agency.
More, smaller satellites make the national security ISR network more resilient because it can continue operating even after losing a spacecraft and because a spacecraft can be more easily replaced. This approach has been made possible, in part, by the falling cost of launches and by the multiple launch sites now available to the NRO, the agency has said. These include Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral in Florida, Wallops Island in Virginia and the North Island of New Zealand.