Update: Despite no plans for a preflight steady fire, SpaceX is on track to make its final start and 2020 landing attempt, early morning December 9, EST (14:00 UTC), Thursday, December 17.
After regular preflight wet dress rehearsal (WDR) and booster Stable fire Prior to each launch since September 2016, SpaceX has begun to gradually erode the need for flight-proof rockets by 2020. Instead, if issues are revealed in a previous flight or post-flight inspection, static fire data will serve more as a powered diagnostic tool. For flight-proven boosters with a clean bill of health, so to speak, SpaceX seems confident enough to leave the process on a few internal Starlink launches and fantastic customer missions.
Now, with NROL-108 launching NRO’s first direct launch agreement with SpaceX and abandoning the four-flight booster assigned to support it, despite being the first flight on any type of flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket, the intelligence agency apparently has the same confidence SpaceX. The Falcon 9B1059, a new upper phase and payload fairing, and the unspecified NRL-108 payload (s) also went to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Launch Complex 39A on 16 December – too late for any WDR or static fire test on 17 December. Trying to get started early.
The mission will be SpaceX’s 26th and final inauguration in 2020 and is a big surprise. – The last orbit of the year was in the U.S. As always, SpaceX will broadcast the launch live, starting 15 minutes before the lift off (8:30 a.m. EST / UTC-5).
The National Reconnaissance Office Fees (NRO) says SpaceX is on track to launch its last Falcon 9 after a nearly two-month delay and attempt a year of landing.
Originally scheduled to launch in early October, the secret orbital spy agency’s NROL-108 launch plans were quietly revealed in routine communication permission requests filed by the FCC through SpaceX. Unfortunately, those plans came at a time when the issue of the Falcon 9 booster engine canceled a SpaceX launch at the last second, forcing the company to investigate a quick but comprehensive discrepancy. As it turns out, the Falcon 9 booster assigned to support NROL-108 (B1059) was a practical sibling with three new boosters affected by the investigation.
The SpaceX may have had to replace some of the nine Merlin 1D engines on the B1059, although the B1059 has successfully completed four launches and landings, with very few results. After all, while nothing is known for sure, the payload-side issue with NROL-108 Satellite (PA) is largely the cause of the next eight-week delay. Now, as confirmed by the NRO on December 14, SpaceX is set to launch its second mission for the spy agency on Thursday, December 17, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. EST (14: 00-17: 00 UTC).
For SpaceX, this will be the third time in a month that a customer has effectively jumped several Falcon 9 booster reuse milestones, demonstrating extreme confidence in the company’s expertise with flight-proof rockets. On December 6, the Falcon 9 Booster B1058 took off for the fourth time in support of SpaceX’s CRS-21 space station NASA’s resumed mission, marking the space agency’s two-time launch. Or Booster flying three times.
Carrying a large communications satellite for the Sirius XM on December 13, another Falcon 9 booster took off for the seventh time, becoming the first private customer to launch on a five-flight or six-flight SpaceX rocket.
Four days after SXM-7, SpaceX will now launch the mysterious NROL-108 mission. With the NRO launching payloads on any type of flight-proof commercial rocket, its first flight will be the first to land on a two-flight, three-flight or four-flight booster – the largest numerical jump ever taken by a SpaceX customer. The NRO’s first and only SpaceX launch – technically contracted by spacecraft provider Bell Aerospace, not the NRO itself – was completed in May 2017.
While less notable, NROL-108 will launch SpaceX’s first U.S. government four-flight Falcon 9 booster, yet another indication that its most valued customers have made full purchases in the value and technical viability of reusable rockets.
Upon launch, the Falcon 9B1059 will flip and return to the Florida coast for landing on one of SpaceX’s two east coast landing zones. One minute or more after the booster separation, two payload ferries half of the Falcon 9 are expected to burst with a 330km (~ 205 mile) downgrade, where SpaceX retrieval ships will attempt GO search and GO Ms Tree recovery.
