NROL-105: SpaceX Launches Classified Payload For The US National Reconnaissance Office

SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the NROL-105 mission at 0439 UTC on January 17), from **Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, carrying a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on a southeast trajectory, with its first stage (B1100) returning safely to Landing Zone 4(LZ-4) at Vandenberg about 7.5 minutes after liftoff, marking the second flight for that booster according to a SpaceX mission description. The launch webcast was ended shortly after landing, a standard practice for classified NRO missions, and no details on the satellite count, orbital parameters, or deployment timeline were disclosed.

NROL-105 marks SpaceX’s first national security launch of 2026 and the 12th overall mission in the NRO’s “proliferated architecture” program—a strategic shift toward deploying hundreds of small, low-cost reconnaissance satellites instead of a few large, expensive ones. This architecture enhances revisit rates, coverage, and resilience, enabling faster intelligence delivery under dynamic global conditions.

"Having hundreds of small satellites on orbit is invaluable to the NRO's mission," NRO Director Chris Scolese said in the NROL-105 press kit, which you can find here.

"They will provide greater revisit rates, increased coverage, more timely delivery of information — and ultimately help us deliver more of what our customers need even faster," he added.

The satellites were developed by SpaceX in partnership with Northrop Grumman, continuing a long-standing collaboration that began with the first proliferated architecture mission, NROL-146, in May 2024.

Saturday's launch underscores SpaceX’s expanding role in national security space operations, complementing its commercial Starlink launches. NROL-105 was SpaceX's seventh mission of 2026. Four of those launches have been devoted to building out the Starlink broadband megaconstellation.

The NROL-105 launch is part of a broader U.S. effort to modernize space-based surveillance amid growing strategic competition, particularly with China’s plans for a 200,000-satellite mega-constellation.