On June 13 at 08:11 UTC, a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket launched the Tac-RL2 “Odyssey” satellite from the last operational Lockheed L-1011 Tristar off the coast of Southern California.

Northrop Grumman, the launch provider, said absolutely nothing about the launch until after it had already occurred. This is fairly unusual for an American launch. There was no live webcast, and there’s no video of the launch. The only public notice was the required aerospace and maritime closures that warned pilots and boat captains that a launch was to take place.

Not much was said about the spacecraft except that it had a “space situational awareness” mission. Built completely from off-the-shelf components, Odyssey was developed by the Space Safari office of the Space Force in less than a year.

This was the second launch in a Space Force program to develop the capability to launch months after a contract is awarded instead of the typical years. TacRL-2 was awarded four months before launch, and Northrop Grumman had 21 days to put the satellite on the rocket and launch it. That’s ridiculously fast for a rocket launch.

The advantage of using Pegasus to launch this mission is its air-launch capability. Because the rocket is carried underneath a plane, it can be launched into any orbit from anywhere with a runway long enough for the plane to take off.

More Information

Northrop Grumman press release