A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:39 a.m. PDT (07:39 UTC). It carried 21 satellites for the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA). The launch followed an earlier attempt that did not get off the ground, Spaceflight Now reported.
The spacecraft are part of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). This is the SDA's plan for a large network of relatively small, mass-produced satellites in low Earth orbit. Their job is to relay data between military users and support missile warning and tracking.
Spreading capability across many cheaper satellites instead of a few expensive ones is meant to make the network more resilient and quicker to upgrade. Each launch like this adds more nodes to the mesh the agency is building in successive tranches.
Primary source
Spaceflight Now
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