Falcon 9 Lifts Off From Vandenberg With the Classified USSF-432 Mission
Liftoff came at 4:48 p.m. on Friday, and the first stage came back to a droneship landing in the Pacific on its eighth flight.
The USSF-432 mission is away from the Central Coast. SpaceX says a Falcon 9 carrying the classified Space Force mission left Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 4:48 p.m. PT on Friday, Nov. 6, near the start of the four hour window the company had set for the attempt.
Readers of this paper saw the mission previewed on Thursday, when the target was still Friday evening and a Saturday backup slot remained in reserve. Friday's attempt went on the first day of that schedule, so the backup was not needed.
The first stage that flew on Friday has been to space before. SpaceX counts the flight as the eighth for that booster, and lists a GPS III-8 mission and six Starlink flights earlier in its record. After the stages parted, the booster came down on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, out in the Pacific Ocean, the company says.
What rode on top of the rocket remains undisclosed. SpaceX has published no description of the payload for this mission, and Spaceflight Now, reporting from the launch on Friday night, notes that neither the company nor the Space Force has confirmed a deployment for the earlier flights in the same mission series either.
The launch adds one more flight to a busy year at the base in northern Santa Barbara County, where SpaceX flies both national security missions and batches of its own Starlink satellites from the same coastal complex.
None to date. The Tribune corrects errors promptly and transparently. Read our corrections policy.
