SpaceX completes 3rd of 10 launches for Space Force’s Tranche constellation
SpaceX today successfully placed another 21 satellites into orbit, the 3rd of a 10-launch contract for the Space Force’s Tranche-1 communications constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The 1st stage (B1103) completed its 4th flight (27 days after its last mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 5th and 6th flights respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet been deployed.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
86 SpaceX
45 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
9 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 86 to 78.
As my readers are well aware, SpaceX has another launch later today, the 13th orbital test flight of its gigantic Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica in Texas. That 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 pm (Eastern). You can watch that here.
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SpaceX today successfully placed another 21 satellites into orbit, the 3rd of a 10-launch contract for the Space Force’s Tranche-1 communications constellation…
Picking some nits:
The word “tranche” means a portion of the whole. The Space Force uses this term to mean “generation” or “version”, much the same as SpaceX uses the letter “V.” Calling the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) the “Tranche Constellation” would be like calling Starlink the “V Constellation.”
The PWSA satellites are also differentiated by function, called “layers.” The communication satellites are known as the transport layer; the missile-tracking satellites are called the tracking layer. Originally there were five other layers, but they seem to have gone away under Trump-47.
This was the third of six launches for the Tranche 1 Transport Layer. SpaceX was awarded all six launches.
The Tranche 1 Tracking Layer also has six launches. SpaceX won four of those and ULA two. None of those satellites is ready for launch yet.
Contracts for the Tranche 2 Transport and Tracking Layers have already been awarded, as have contracts for the Tranche 3 Tracking Layer satellites.
Such an odd term…right there with “contracts to let.”