Stargazer: the last flying Lockheed L-1011

The airframe entered service with Air Canada in March 1974, spent a few weeks on lease to Air Lanka in 1982, and went into storage at Marana, Arizona in 1990 when Air Canada retired its TriStars. Orbital Sciences bought it in 1992. The company had been launching its Pegasus rocket from a NASA B-52 and wanted its own carrier; it compared the B-52, the 747 and the DC-10 on altitude, speed, modification cost and running cost, and chose the L-1011. Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge, England, stripped the cabin, strengthened the belly and fitted the hooks and systems that carry a 23-ton rocket. The name is an inside joke: the aircraft's owner was a fan of *Star Trek: The Next Generation*, whose Enterprise was commanded by a character who had served on a ship called Stargazer.

Stargazer flew its first Pegasus launch in 1994. Over the next three decades it carried Pegasus XL rockets to about 40,000 feet off Florida, California, the Marshall Islands and the Canary Islands and released them to put satellites into orbit for NASA, the US military and commercial customers, including NASA's ICON, IBEX and NuSTAR missions.

Pegasus is now at the end of its life, and Stargazer flew what is expected to be the final Pegasus launch in 2026, carrying the LINK spacecraft to boost the orbit of NASA's Swift observatory. The FAA launch license ran to March 2026 and was extended by an emergency permit for that mission. The aircraft has not retired: Northrop Grumman flies it on missile and hypersonic flight-test work for customers it does not name, which is why it often appears on the tracker heading out over the Pacific test ranges from Mojave or Point Mugu, and sometimes deploys to Florida, Hawaii or Kwajalein.

It is also, as of 2026, the only airworthy L-1011 TriStar in the world. The last airline TriStars left service in the early 2000s, the RAF retired its tankers in 2014, and the handful of others are museum pieces. Every flight Stargazer makes is a flight no other L-1011 can.

Three engines with the center one buried in the tail, fed by an S-duct, is the TriStar's signature; the DC-10 and MD-11 carry their third engine in a straight pod above the fuselage. Stargazer is white with Northrop Grumman titles and a blue cheatline, has few cabin windows, and carries a cradle under the belly between the main gear that is empty except when a rocket is attached. On the tracker it broadcasts N140SC, often with no callsign, and flies long racetrack patterns over the ocean.