Falcon 9 Block 5 | SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A

Tranche 1 Transport Layer A is one of six missions by the United States Space Force Space Development Agency (SDA) for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranche 1 Transport Layer constellation, which will provide assured, resilient, low-latency military data and connectivity worldwide to the full range of warfighter platforms from Low Earth Orbit satellites.

The constellation will be interconnected with Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISLs) which have significantly increased performance over existing radio frequency crosslinks. It is expected to operate over Ka band, have stereo coverage and be dynamically networked for simpler hand-offs, greater bandwidth and fault tolerance.

This launch carries 21 satellites manufactured by Northrop Grumman.

In the news

• Rocket Report: A rare Falcon 9 scrub; is it just about Vulcan's time to shine? (opens in a new tab) Arstechnica · 9 Oct 2026, 07:00
• Rocket Report: A rare Falcon 9 scrub; is it just about Vulcan's time to shine? (opens in a new tab) Arstechnica · 9 Oct 2026, 07:00
• Launch Preview: Flights from South Korea, China, USA planned for this week (opens in a new tab) NASASpaceflight · 5 Oct 2026, 16:55
• Launch Preview: Flights from South Korea, China, USA planned for this week (opens in a new tab) NASASpaceflight · 5 Oct 2026, 16:55
• Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 21 data transport satellites for the Space Development Agency (opens in a new tab) Spaceflight Now · 4 Oct 2026, 16:33

Provenance

Local observation history

What this site observed; not complete provider history.

• 11 Oct 2026, 07:33 EDT — Changed
• 10 Oct 2026, 12:29 EDT — Added