SpaceX launched a batch of spy satellites for the U.S. government this evening (May 11) from California's foggy central coast.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 10:13 p.m. EDT (7:13 p.m. local time; 0213 GMT on May 12), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-172.
NROL-172 was the 13th launch devoted to building out a new reconnaissance network that the NRO, which operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites, calls its "proliferated architecture."
"To stay ahead of the competition and ensure it can continue to operate in a heightened threat environment, the NRO is modernizing its architecture in space and on the ground — delivering more capability faster with increased resilience," agency officials wrote in the NROL-172 press kit.
"A greater number of satellites — large and small, government and commercial, in multiple orbits — will deliver an order of magnitude more signals and images than is available today," they added.
The satellites for the new network were built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. We don't know exactly what they do, where they orbit or how many of them go up on each launch; the NRO has not released such information.
All of the proliferated architecture satellites have reached orbit atop Falcon 9 rockets flying out of Vandenberg, which sits on California's scenic but often foggy central coast. The first such launch, NROL-146, lifted off in May 2024. The most recent before today, NROL-105, took place this past January.
Everything seemed to go according to plan this evening. The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth 8.5 minutes after liftoff, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the second launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. SpaceX's livestream ended shortly thereafter, at the request of the NRO.
NROL-172 was the 55th Falcon 9 launch of the year. The vast majority of the rocket's liftoffs so far in 2026 — 44 of 55 — have been dedicated to building out Starlink, SpaceX's broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 4 p.m. ET on May 11 with the new target launch time of 10:13 p.m. EDT, then again at 11:10 p.m. ET on May 11 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.
