Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-627
SpaceX launches Falcon 9 Block 5 carrying USSF-627 from Space Launch Complex 4E, Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA, United States of America on November 12, 2026 at 02:35 UTC. Launch Library files that T-0 to the minute. It's go for launch.
COUNTDOWN
FLIGHT PLAN
The window opens at 2026-11-12 02:35:00Z and closes at 2026-11-12 06:35:00Z. Current T-0 confirmed by official or reliable sources.
FIELD KIT / OPTICS
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MISSION BRIEF
A classified mission for the United States Space Force. It is possibly a batch of classified LEO satellites based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite bus, based on locations of rocket stage drop zones being exact fits with previous Starlink Group 15 launches.
SOURCE: LAUNCH LIBRARY 2 // THE SPACE DEVS
LAUNCH CORRIDOR
- Due east
- The lowest inclination a direct launch from here can reach is 34.6°. That’s this pad’s own latitude. Flying east also gets the most free speed from Earth’s rotation.
- Due south
- The polar corridor, at 90° inclination, passes over both poles. It gets no help from Earth’s spin, so the same rocket can carry less.
Drag the globe to turn it. The shading is the real terminator, and it moves.
A globe of the Earth centred on Space Launch Complex 4E at latitude 34.63 degrees north, longitude 120.61 degrees west. Two curved lines leave the pad. The solid gold line runs due east and marks the lowest orbital inclination a direct launch from this site can reach, 34.6 degrees, equal to the pad’s latitude of 34.6 degrees. The dashed cyan line runs due south and marks the polar corridor at 90 degrees inclination. The darkened part of the globe is the night side. The surface wind is from 94° at 19 km/h. That's the cyan arrow at the pad.
LAUNCH SITE
Space Launch Complex 4E
Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA, United States of America
OBSERVED 2026-11-11 10:45:00Z // OPEN-METEO (CC BY 4.0) // GENERAL CONDITIONS, NOT LAUNCH CRITERIA
Minimum direct inclination 35°. This pad is 35° north of the equator, so a direct launch can't reach an orbit inclined less than 35°. An orbit of inclination i never passes over latitudes beyond ±i. Getting to an equatorial orbit, which geostationary satellites need, takes a 35° plane change at some point in the flight. Inclinations of 35° and up are reachable straight off the pad. The ground here moves east at about 383 m/s with Earth's spin. That's 465 m/s at the equator, falling with the cosine of latitude. A launch due east keeps that head start.
DATUM WGS-84 // EQUIRECTANGULAR PROJECTION // ORBIT FIGURES DERIVED FROM THE PUBLISHED LATITUDE
Open this pad in a mapPAD CONDITIONS
SURFACE WIND @ 10 M
19km/h
Blowing from the east, bearing 94 degrees
GUSTING
22km/h
Clear sky
SOURCE: OPEN-METEO CC BY 4.0
The observed figures are general weather at the coordinates of Space Launch Complex 4E. They aren’t the launch rules. The operator and the range write those for each mission, and they cover things this forecast doesn’t carry, like electric fields, cloud layers higher up and winds along the rocket’s path. Only the operator publishes them. Wind often stops a countdown, but no number here is a limit for this flight. Nothing here is a go or no-go call. No operator figure was published for this attempt.