Liftoff Time
No Earlier Than February, 2026
Tranche 1 Transport Layer A is one of six missions by the United States Space Force Space Development Agency (SDA) for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranche 1 Transport Layer constellation, which will provide assured, resilient, low-latency military data and connectivity worldwide to the full range of warfighter platforms from Low Earth Orbit satellites. Despite this mission being termed as T1TL-A, this will be the 3rd Tranche 1 Transport Layer to reach launch, following T1TL-B & C in late 2025. The constellation will be interconnected with Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISLs), which have significantly increased performance over existing radio frequency crosslinks. It is expected to operate over Ka band, have stereo coverage, and be dynamically networked for simpler hand-offs, greater bandwidth, and fault tolerance.
Manufacturer: Northrop Grumman
Operator: Space Development Agency
Polar Orbit
21 Payloads


Agency
SpaceXPrice
$69.75 million
Rocket
Diameter: 3.7m
Height: 70m
Payload to Orbit
LEO: 22,800 kg
GTO: 8,300 kg
Liftoff Thrust
7,607 Kilonewtons
Fairing
Diameter: 5.2m
Height: 13m
Stages
2