Kartavya Kant Tiwari

On September 22, 2025, SpaceX made its 11th mission a success, as part of the National Reconnaissance Office program titled the “proliferated architecture”. The flight, designated NROL-48, took off at Vandenberg Space Force Base on a Falcon 9 rocket and put several small reconnaissance and communications satellites into orbit. The aim is to develop a more resilient and responsive space surveillance system consisting of a large number of smaller satellites as opposed to numbering only large satellites. What Is the Proliferated Architecture? According to NRO, the proliferated architecture is an emerging model of U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) that puts heavy focus on large volumes of small, lower-cost satellites distributed into a number of different orbits. The design is supposed to be more revisit-friendly (frequency of time the given spot of the Earth is observed), larger in coverage, and more intelligence-delivering. These satellites are also referred to as...