SpaceX Launches Classified USSF-385 Mission, Lands Booster

SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission for the U.S. Space Force, sending a Falcon 9 skyward from its Vandenberg site in California on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2026, and recovered the rocket's first stage on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.²³⁴⁶

Launch in fog

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg at 7:00:54 a.m. PDT amid dense fog, according to Spaceflight Now, before heading on a southerly trajectory.²⁴

Ahead of the flight, SpaceX cautioned that people living in three nearby counties — Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura — might hear one or more sonic booms as the launch unfolded.⁵⁶³

Booster recovery

About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, the first stage descended back to Earth as planned and settled onto the Pacific Ocean-based drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.¹⁴⁵⁶

The landing marked the booster's tenth launch and recovery. Space.com and Spaceflight Now identified the booster as Booster 1100; sources differed on whether its previous flights included NROL-105 or NROL-95 alongside eight Starlink missions.¹²⁴³

Secrecy over payload

SpaceX withheld footage of the rocket's payload and upper stage, explaining that the customer had requested this. The payloads, their activities and the exact destination of USSF-385 remain classified.²⁴⁵⁶

Shortly after the booster's landing, SpaceX cut off its launch webcast, a practice the company has followed on other national security missions.¹⁵⁶

Part of a wider pattern

USSF-385 was the third classified Space Force mission SpaceX has flown from Vandenberg in 16 days, following USSF-153 on Sept. 10 and USSF-259 on Sept. 16, which appeared to carry 17 satellites to a different orbit.¹⁵²⁴

Spaceflight Now reported that the mission likely represents the third in a sequence of flights delivering satellites built on SpaceX's Starshield platform, a government-oriented variant of the Starlink satellite.²⁴

According to Space.com, the launch was SpaceX's third national security flight of the month and came amid a heavy 2026 cadence in which Falcon 9 had flown 108 times, three-quarters of those missions dedicated to building out the Starlink constellation, which the outlet said had grown to over 11,000 satellites orbiting Earth at low altitude; SpaceX has also flown two Falcon Heavy and two Starship missions this year, with a third Starship flight, an attempt to reach orbit, scheduled for Monday, Sept. 28.¹