![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/oAE9hDEmYnk6fqRk4cjtc9-1280-80.jpg\")
\n A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the Third Tranche 1 Mission for the U.S. Space Development Agency from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
\n A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the Third Tranche 1 Mission for the U.S. Space Development Agency from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
Starship isn’t the only SpaceX rocket flying today.<\/p>\n
A Falcon 9<\/a> rocket launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a> today (July 16), carrying 21 satellites for the U.S. military’s advanced new “Tranche 1 Transport Layer” (T1TL) constellation to orbit.<\/p>\n Liftoff took place at 4:32 p.m. EDT (2032 GMT; 1:32 p.m. local California time). <\/p>\n SpaceX’s Starship<\/a> megarocket \u2014 the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built \u2014 is slated to make its 13th test flight<\/a> a few hours later. It will lift off from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas during a 90-minute window that opens at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT; 5:45 p.m. local Texas time).<\/p>\n SpaceX will stream that mission live, and Space.com will carry the feed<\/a>. Coverage will begin about half an hour before launch.<\/p>\n Today’s Falcon 9 flight will help assemble the T1TL, a network in low Earth orbit<\/a> (LEO) that will be operated by the U.S. Space Force<\/a>‘s Space Development Agency (SDA). <\/p>\n The T1TL “will provide global communications access and deliver persistent regional encrypted connectivity in support of warfighter missions around the globe,” SDA officials wrote in a explainer<\/a>.<\/p>\n The T1TL will eventually consist of 126 satellites, which will be built by York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Forty-two of the spacecraft have reached orbit to date, on two Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg \u2014 one last September<\/a> and another last October<\/a>. <\/p>\n These 126 spacecraft will be part of a larger LEO network that the SDA calls the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.<\/p>\n The PWSA is “a proliferated constellation of hundreds of optically linked small satellites, in low-Earth orbit (LEO), delivering capability at speed to the warfighter,” SDA officials wrote in a Tranche 1 fact sheet<\/a>.<\/p>\n “SDA leverages spiral development to deploy and proliferate new capability into a new generation of the PWSA every two years, called a ‘tranche,’ to continually increase capability used by the warfighter,” they added.<\/p>\n Previous Booster 1103 launches<\/p>\n