Falcon 9 vertical at Vandenberg SLC-4E ahead of USSF-259. Credit: SpaceX / X
SpaceX stood down from Tuesday night’s Falcon 9 attempt for USSF-259 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and is now targeting Wednesday, September 16, 2026, for liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4E.
Earlier on Tuesday the company posted that Falcon 9 was vertical at pad 4E ahead of the attempt, linking the same USSF-259 mission page. That page listed a four-hour window opening at 6:00 p.m. PT on September 15, with a backup at the same clock time on September 16 if the first night did not fly. After the scrub, SpaceX’s public update simply moved the target to September 16 without naming a new hold reason.
USSF-259 is a U.S. Space Force mission with a classified payload, the same national-security lane that recently put USSF-153 off the same Vandenberg pad. It sits beside SpaceX’s commercial cadence that just marked Falcon’s 700th overall flight from Florida and the company’s push toward Starship Flight 14’s first planned Earth orbit.
SpaceX has not published a new booster flight count or droneship assignment in the scrub note itself, and the payload details remain under wraps as usual for Space Force flights. If Wednesday’s window holds, the stack gets another West Coast national-security shot about a week after USSF-153; if range or hardware slips again, the next public cue will be another SpaceX retarget post rather than a long silence.
