SpaceX Launched a Secret Space Force Mission Last Night — Its Second in Under a Week
SpaceX launched its second classified Space Force mission in under a week from Vandenberg Space Force Base, part of a busy September that has also seen the company's Falcon 9 rocket pass its 700th and 400th launch milestones from separate pads.
Vandenberg Space Force Base lit up the California sky again Wednesday night, marking the second classified US military launch from the site in less than a week.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 9:07 p.m. EDT (6:07 p.m. local California time) carrying the USSF-259 mission for the US Space Force. The launch came just days after a separate Falcon 9 carried the USSF-153 mission from the same pad on September 9 — meaning Vandenberg has hosted two classified national security launches within roughly a week of each other.
As is standard practice for national security payloads, SpaceX's live webcast offered little detail about what exactly the rocket was carrying. The broadcast cut away shortly after the Falcon 9's first stage successfully returned to Earth, landing on a drone ship stationed in the Pacific Ocean approximately 8.5 minutes after liftoff — a routine, if still technically impressive, demonstration of SpaceX's now well-established booster recovery process.
The launch adds to what's shaping up as a genuinely busy month for Falcon 9. Earlier in September, SpaceX completed its 700th Falcon rocket launch overall, delivering the final three O3b mPOWER communications satellites to orbit for satellite operator SES — a milestone that underscored just how routine orbital launch has become for the company barely two decades after its founding. The same week also saw Falcon 9 mark the 400th orbital flight from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, a separate but equally significant operational milestone for the rocket family.
Beyond the classified US missions, the broader pace of global launch activity has remained steady through the week — European launch provider Avio sent a pair of climate-monitoring spacecraft into orbit aboard a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana, part of a mission focused on studying changes across plant life, oceans, and atmospheric conditions.
For SpaceX, back-to-back classified Space Force missions within the same week reflect a broader trend: national security launch contracts have become an increasingly steady, high-frequency part of the company's overall manifest, alongside its commercial satellite deployments and NASA missions — a cadence that shows little sign of slowing as the company continues pushing toward its eventual Starship-Super Heavy debut from Florida.
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