SpaceX launched its first national security mission of the year on Friday night (Jan. 16), putting a group of surveillance satellites aloft from California.

At 11:39 p.m. EST (8:39 p.m. local California time; 0439GMT on Jan. 17), a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, launching the NROL-105 mission for the United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

NROL-105 was the 12th launch dedicated to developing the NRO’s “proliferated architecture,” a new reconnaissance constellation that promotes flexibility, rapid deployment, cost effectiveness, and durability.

“Having hundreds of small satellites in orbit is invaluable to the NRO’s mission,” NRO Director Chris Scolese stated in the NROL-105 press kit, which is available 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 told reporters.

SpaceX and Northrop Grumman are the companies that build the proliferated architecture satellites. All of them reached orbit on Falcon 9 rockets launched from Vandenberg. The first such mission, NROL-146, launched in May 2024.

The Falcon 9’s first stage safely returned to Earth on Friday, landing at Vandenberg around 7.5 minutes after launch. According to SpaceX’s mission description, this was the booster’s second launch and landing.

We don’t know how many satellites were launched on NROL-105, or where and when they’ll be deployed; the mission description does not provide this information.

And we didn’t get it during the webcast; SpaceX’s streaming ceased shortly after the booster landed, most likely at the behest of the NRO.

NROL-105 marked SpaceX’s sixth flight of 2026. Four of these launches have been used to expand the company’s massive Starlink broadband megaconstellation.