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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – Spacex launched a US clandestine spy satellite into space for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on Saturday (December 19), marking its 26th rocket of the year.
The mysterious payload, named NROL-108, lifted off from Pad 39A here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT), during a planned three-hour launch window.
A two-stage used Falcon 9 rocket carried the spy satellite aloft, as part of a government mission called NROL-108, which marks SpaceX’s 26th launch in 2020, a new record for the company. About nine minutes after lift-off, the first stage of the booster produced some dramatic sonic booms as it returned to Mainland, landing at SpaceX Landing Zone-1 (LZ-1) at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Video: Watch the epic landing of SpaceX’s NROL-108 Falcon 9 rocket
Related: See the evolution of SpaceX rockets in pictures
Today’s flight was the fifth launch of this particular first stage of the Falcon 9. The thruster, designated B1059, previously launched two commercial cargo missions to NASA’s International Space Station, delivered a SpaceX Starlink satellites batch in orbit earlier this year, and more recently launched an Earth observation satellite for Argentina.
The Falcon 9 took off into a clear blue sky on Saturday morning, a sea change from Thursday’s launch attempt. Thick clouds covered the rocket from view that day and finally a problem with the second stage of the rocket it forced SpaceX to postpone the launch.
Several minutes after the Falcon 9 jumped off the platform, the rocket’s first stage reappeared in the sky, with the iconic sonic booms that you expect to crack overhead as the booster descended to the landing site.
B1059 is just the second thruster to land on the Cape (as opposed to a drone ship at sea) this year. (A third landed on the ground at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after the launch of the Earth observation satellite Sentinel-6 for NASA in November). In fact, this is now the third trip to LZ-1 for this thruster, as the veteran Falcon 9’s first stage also returned to ground after putting the CRS-20 mission into orbit earlier this year.
Related: Travel to space (and vice versa) in a Falcon 9 in this incredible video
A mysterious burden
Today’s Falcon 9 launch brought a classified payload into orbit of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the government agency that oversees the country’s spy satellite fleet. Not much is known about the satellite, except for the fact that the NRO secured travel for the top-secret cargo through non-traditional means.
Typically, the reconnaissance agency will secure its trips to space through the US Space Force’s National Security Space Launch Program, but this time it did so on its own. according to a report from Spaceflight Now.
“In some cases, the NRO uses alternative methods to acquire launch services after conducting a cumulative assessment of the satellite risk tolerance, required launch dates, available launch capabilities, and cost, all for the purpose of ensure satellites are safely delivered into orbit in a timely manner, ” the spokesperson told Spaceflight Now.
Another interesting twist is that SpaceX did not conduct a static fire test of its rocket before the flight. Typically, the company holds the rocket on the platform and briefly fires its nine first-stage engines to make sure its systems are working as expected before liftoff. It’s rare that SpaceX skips this routine test, but it’s not unheard of.
The mission marks the sixth launch of the year for the NRO, and will be the second overall to fly aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. The first was the NROL-76 mission in May 2017.
Hawk flight
The NROL-108 mission is SpaceX’s 50th revision of a Falcon 9 since the company recovered its first thruster in 2015. It also marks the 70th landing of a Falcon 9. To maintain landing, the thruster was separated from its upper stage. and made a series. of ballet orbital movements, reorienting to land. It then performed a series of three engine burns to slow down enough to gently land on its designated landing pad, marking the 21st successful landing for SpaceX.
To facilitate reuse, the company typically relies on its two huge drone ships, named “Of course I still love you” and “Just read the instructions.” The floating platforms are typically stationed in the Atlantic Ocean and have allowed SpaceX launch and subsequently land more rockets.
“Of course I still love you” is out of this mission, as the booster is returning to the ground, while “Just read the instructions” brings back a booster from the company’s most recent launch in Dce. 13. For that mission, a Falcon 9 rocket was launched for the seventh time, take a massive satellite into space for SIrius XM. That thruster is one of two that have flown those seven missions and should sail back to port around the same time as today’s launch.
Once they return to Port Canaveral in Florida, the landed thrusters are transported back to the SpaceX facility, where they are carefully inspected and reused to fly again.
The current version of the Falcon 9 was finalized in 2018. Known as Block 5, it features 1.7 million pounds of thrust, as well as a few other upgrades that make it capable of quick reuse. SpaceX says that each of these boosters can fly up to 10 times with small renovations in between, and potentially up to 100 times before retirement.
To date, SpaceX has launched and landed the same booster a maximum of seven times. According to the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, each Falcon 9 thruster is capable of flying at least 10 times with minimal renewals between flights. We have yet to see a fly so many times, but we could see it next year.
Rocket Fairing Recovery
Before today’s launch, SpaceX deployed one of its twin fairing receivers, GO Ms. Tree, to search for the fairing parts after today’s launch. GO Miss Chief, the company’s other fairing recovery ship, remained in port for the second mission in a row. These two ships act as giant mobile receiver gloves, hooking the payload fairings (the protective cones that surround the satellites during launch) onto their attached nets as they fall back to Earth.
To do this, SpaceX has installed parachutes and special software in its payload fairings, which consist of two pieces joined together. The fairings are designed to guide themselves to the recovery zone where Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief can wait to hook them as they fall back to Earth. If the boats fail or the weather is too bad to try and catch, the duo have equipment on board to pull the fairing pieces out of the water and take them back to port for refurbishment.
The company has been successfully repurposing payload fairings, and the latest mission, which launched the Sirius XM-7 satellite, was the first flight to feature a reconditioned fairing on a non-SpaceX payload. Typically, the company has been reusing fairings in its own Starlink missions. One of the fairing pieces that wrapped the Sirius XM-7 payload as it traveled through the atmosphere previously flew on the Anasis-II mission earlier this summer, which launched a communications satellite for the South Korean military. .
Today’s mission will mark the end of a busy launch year for the Cape. In all, 31 missions have been launched from the area this year, and 26 of them have been on SpaceX rockets. Next year, SpaceX is expected to continue to complete its fleet of Starlink satellites, launch two more astronaut missions and one of its heavy payloads, the Heavy hawk.
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