SpaceX closed out its 2025 national security launch campaign on Tuesday with a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), marking both its final intelligence payload of the year and what is expected to be the last Falcon 9 booster landing at Landing Zone 2 (LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral. The mission, designated NROL-77, successfully deployed its payload, the NRO confirmed late Tuesday.
Credit: SpaceX
Liftoff occurred at 2:16 p.m. EST (1916 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40, with the Falcon 9 tracking northeast over the Atlantic. The NRO revealed no details about the spacecraft aboard the rocket, describing it only as a system “designed, built, and operated by NRO.” The mission relied on Falcon 9 first stage booster B1096, which had previously flown NASA’s IMAP mission, Amazon’s Kuiper Falcon 01, and a Starlink batch. Roughly eight and a half minutes after launch, the booster returned to Florida, touching down at LZ-2. The landing marked the 16th for the site and SpaceX’s 547th booster recovery overall.
NROL-77 is the second NRO mission flown by SpaceX under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract, a five-year agreement dividing national security missions between SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. The launch is also the first assignment from Order Year 5, announced in October 2023, during which SpaceX received ten missions worth a combined $1.236 billion. According to Col. Kathryn Cantu, director of the NRO Office of Space Launch and mission director for NROL-77, the growing partnership between the NRO and Space Systems Command (SSC) is key to fielding advanced intelligence capabilities rapidly amid increasing threats in space.
While several NRO launches fall under the NSSL framework, others, such as the NROL-146 series linked to the agency’s proliferated satellite program, are funded through other classified channels. Earlier this year, the NROL-174 mission flew on a Northrop Grumman Minotaur 4 through the Rocket Systems Launch Program, which procures smaller launch services. Col. Ryan M. Hiserote, System Delta 80 commander and NSSL program manager, praised the joint effort between military, intelligence, and SpaceX teams in validating and preparing the hardware needed to ensure NROL-77’s success.
The launch caps a packed year for the NRO, which oversaw ten missions in 2025—nine of them aboard Falcon 9 rockets. Among them were NROL-153 and several rideshare payloads on SpaceX’s Transporter missions in January and March, along with flights such as NROL-57, NROL-69, NROL-192, NROL-145, NROL-48, and finally NROL-77.
The landing of B1096 may also signal the end of SpaceX’s use of LZ-2. Space Launch Delta 45 has directed all launch providers at Cape Canaveral to shift booster recoveries back to landing areas colocated with their launch pads, opening space for an expanding roster of launch companies. With SpaceX’s lease for LZ-1 and LZ-2 set to expire on December 31, 2025, the company has accelerated work on new recovery sites. It received environmental approval earlier this year to build a landing pad near SLC-40 and is also planning a second landing zone at Launch Complex 39A—both necessary for recovering twin boosters during Falcon Heavy missions.
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