---
title: "SpaceX Puts a Secret Satellite Up From California and Keeps the Window Curtains Drawn"
description: "A Falcon 9 carried the Space Force’s classified USSF-385 mission, the third such flight this month"
author: "Arthur Wren"
published: 2026-09-26T15:15:43Z
modified: 2026-09-27T06:52:47Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/spacex-puts-a-secret-satellite-up-from-california-and-keeps--026131
language: en
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# SpaceX Puts a Secret Satellite Up From California and Keeps the Window Curtains Drawn

*A Falcon 9 carried the Space Force’s classified USSF-385 mission, the third such flight this month*

By Arthur Wren · September 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/spacex-puts-a-secret-satellite-up-from-california-and-keeps--026131

## In brief

- SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission for the US Space Force from Vandenberg at 10 a.m. EDT on September 26
- The Falcon 9 first stage, booster B1100, landed on a drone ship; it was its 10th flight, after NROL-105 and 8 Starlink missions
- It was SpaceX’s third Space Force launch in 16 days, after USSF-153 on Sept 10 and USSF-259 on Sept 16
- Falcon 9 has flown 108 times in 2026; 75% of missions were for Starlink, which now has over 11,000 satellites in orbit
- A third Starship test flight is set for Sept 28, when the rocket will attempt to reach orbit for the first time

There was fog over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California this morning when a Falcon 9 rocket went up at ten o’clock Eastern time, or seven in the morning by the local clock. On board, according to the United States Space Force, was something called USSF-385. What it is, where it is going and what it will do when it gets there, the public is not permitted to know.

The Space Force describes such payloads in the language of national security, a phrase which in this case means that the several hundred million taxpayers who paid for the flight know less about it than any interested foreign power with a decent radar. The payload is classified. The orbit is classified. SpaceX, which built and flew the rocket, cut its webcast shortly after the first stage landed, as it habitually does when the customer is the government. On ordinary commercial missions the company lets anyone watch the satellites drop free into space; on missions for the armed forces, the curtain comes down.

The first stage, for its part, behaved exactly as expected. Eight and a half minutes after liftoff it came down on the drone ship *Of Course I Still Love You*, waiting in the Pacific, and this was the tenth flight and tenth landing for this particular booster, which carries the unromantic designation B1100. Its earlier work, Space.com notes, consisted of one earlier spy-satellite job for the National Reconnaissance Office, NROL-105, and eight missions hauling Starlink internet satellites.

That division of labour tells you most of what is worth knowing about the modern American space programme. This was the Falcon 9’s 108th flight of 2026, and three quarters of those launches have flown for one customer only: SpaceX itself, stacking its Starlink constellation, which now stands at more than 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit. The military work, dramatic though it sounds, is the garnish. The rocket is a lorry, and most of the time the lorry drives to its own warehouse.

Still, the pace of the government work has quickened of late. USSF-385 was the third Space Force flight SpaceX has launched in sixteen days; Falcon 9s carried the classified USSF-153 and USSF-259 missions from the same base on September 10 and September 16. Three secret payloads in just over a fortnight is a reminder that the American military now buys space launches the way one buys train tickets, by which nothing derogatory is meant. It is simply the new and largely unremarked fact of the matter.

Beyond the Falcon 9, SpaceX has flown its Falcon Heavy twice this year and its enormous Starship twice as well. The third Starship launch of 2026 is set for the morning of Monday, September 28, in a seventy-five-minute window opening at 8:15 a.m. Eastern. On that flight, for the first time, the company will try to put Starship all the way into orbit, something the megarocket has never yet managed.

That, at least, will happen where people can see it. The company’s webcasts will run and the world can watch the thing succeed or fail in full view. For whatever went up on USSF-385 this morning, there will be no such audience. The booster came home; the cargo went somewhere; and the men who know where are not saying.