A Falcon 9 rocket with 10 satellites on Sunday launched a new era for how the military orders spacecraft and gets them into orbit with an eye toward speeding up the process to become much more agile.

The two-stage Space Exploration Technologies rocket rose away from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex-4 at 7:29 a.m. with a loud and lengthy rumble heard around the Lompoc and Santa Maria valleys. Liftoff had been delayed since Thursday when one of the nine Merlin engines triggered an abort with 3 seconds left in the countdown.

Accompanied by sonic booms, the first-stage booster returned after completing its chores, landing at Vandenberg just west of the launch site.

The rocket carried 10 satellites for the Space Development Agency, a relatively young organization formed in 2019, based at the Pentagon and now under the umbrella of the U.S. Space Force. 

Per the request of the customer, SpaceX ended its broadcast after the first-stage booster’s landing and before confirmation of the payload’s separation from the rocket. However, SDA representatives later declared the mission successful.

Dubbed Tranche 0, the mission involves 10 satellites as part of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a new approach to buying and launching missile-tracking and data-relay spacecraft. 

Specifically, the rocket carried two data-relay space vehicles built by SpaceX, along with eight satellites built by York Space Systems.

“This is a completely new way to field these capabilities, and we’re excited to do it here at Vandenberg,” said Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency.

Rather than taking 10 years to build and spending that amount of time in orbit, the new system is designed to have hundreds of satellites proliferating space. 

“We are actually flying satellites every two to three years, and then those satellites will last five years and we’ll continually refresh them so it’s kind of the cellphone model,” Tournear said.  “You continually get updates to these capabilities.”

The “transport” satellites will move data, such as targeting information from troops in the field to centers around the world and back to weapon systems.

Military members will be able to use the satellites to move the data to create targets quickly and differently than historically.

“In addition, our satellites are also going to be able to provide advanced missile detection,” he added. “Everybody’s heard a lot about the new missiles that Russia and China are developing, these satellites are specifically designed to be able to detect and track them and calculate firing solutions so that you can actually engage those.”

Upon arriving successfully in orbit, the satellites will undergo a checkout phase before being ready for demonstration by the end of summer.

The new system will be fielded using a spiral approach, with delivery of the Tranche 1 satellites expected to begin in September 2024 and involve 11 launches of the tracking and transport craft. 

The system uses technology developed commercially, allowing the satellites to feature the newest tools. 

“Because of the fact that you have these kind of spiral approaches, you have built in resiliency, and you’ve already built in the ability to time phase out for obsolescence of your parts,” Tournear said. 

By Tranche 3, they expect the system to have around 400 transport satellites and approximately 100 tracking satellites to cover the many missions across the globe and provide resiliency. 

“This is a major accomplishment for SDA and for the whole Department of Defense. It shows that our key pillars, proliferation and spiral development, can deliver for national security space,” Tournear said in a written statement released after the launch.

“Through this launch, we’ve demonstrated that SDA can keep a schedule to deliver enhanced capabilities every two years,” he added. “This revolutionary approach is enabled by growth in the commercial marketplace, allowing the PWSA to move forward to deliver warfighting capabilities in each future tranche.”

The schedule calls for the remainder of the Tranche 0 satellites to launch in June.

Sunday’s liftoff marked the sixth from the West Coast during 2023 and Vandenberg’s seventh launch of the year.