SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 27 Starlink satellites, lands on ship at sea (video)

long-distance photo of a black and white rocket rising diagonally through a blue sky — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the NROL-172 mission from California on May 11, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX will launch a secret mission for the U.S. Space Force today (Sept. 10), and you can watch the action live.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today during a three-hour window that opens at 11:37 a.m. EDT (1537 GMT; 8:37 a.m. local time), kicking off a mission called USSF-153.

You can watch live via SpaceX, starting about 10 minutes before launch.

USSF-153 is a classified mission, so little is known about its payloads — what they are or where exactly they're headed.

We likely won't get clarity from the webcast, which is expected to end shortly after the Falcon 9's first stage comes back to Earth. The booster will land in the Pacific Ocean atop a SpaceX drone ship about 8.5 minutes after liftoff.

However, the location of that touchdown provides some potentially useful information about USSF-153, according to NextSpaceflight.com.

The mission might be carrying "a batch of classified LEO [low Earth orbit] satellites for a U.S. government entity based on SpaceX's Starshield satellite bus, based on locations of rocket stage drop zones being exact fits with previous Starlink Group 15 launches," the outlet wrote.

Starlink is SpaceX's constellation of LEO broadband satellites. "Starshield leverages SpaceX's Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts," SpaceX wrote in a description of the Starshield program.

Previous Booster 1081 launches

Today's launch will be the 104th Falcon 9 mission of 2026. Eighty of the rocket's flights this year have been dedicated to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft.

USSF-153 will be the 27th flight for this particular Falcon 9's first stage. The record for a SpaceX booster is 37, set last month during a Starlink launch.

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.