USSF-259 lifted off from Vandenberg at 9:07:56 p.m. EDT on Sept. 16, a day after SpaceX scrubbed the first attempt before fueling.
The Falcon 9 carried a classified U.S. Space Force payload expected to enter low Earth orbit at roughly 80 degrees inclination on a southerly track.
B1097 completed its 13th flight and landed about 8.5 minutes after liftoff on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific.
The mission was SpaceX’s third U.S. Space Force launch in a month under the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 contract, following USSF-366 on Aug. 15 and USSF-153 on Sept. 10.
Public documents identify those earlier flights as R1 and R2 with 23 satellites each, while USSF-259 is labeled TH-1 and another mission, R-3, is scheduled for Sept. 27.