SpaceX carried out its second Falcon 9 launch in six days on Wednesday, Nov. 11, for a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force. The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 8:36 p.m. local time, beginning the USSF-627 mission. Details about the payload and its purpose remain classified.
The launch took place at 11:36 p.m. Eastern time, which corresponds to 1:36 GMT on Thursday, Nov. 12. It was another SpaceX mission for the U.S. Space Force in a short span of time. Just five days earlier, on Nov. 6, a Falcon 9 carrying a payload designated USSF-432 lifted off from the same base on California’s central coast. In that case, too, no detailed information was released about the satellites or their tasks.
According to speculation by some experts, both missions may have served to launch Starshield satellites, which SpaceX is developing for national security agencies. The devices may be linked to the Space Based Sensing and Targeting program, which aims to observe and track potential targets around the world. However, this has not been officially confirmed. SpaceX has not disclosed the contents of the USSF-627 and USSF-432 payloads, and the webcasts of both launches ended shortly after the rockets’ first stages landed.
During Wednesday’s mission, the Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth about eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It landed on SpaceX’s autonomous drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean. It was the seventh flight of this particular booster, designated 1103.
Editor: JŁ
