SpaceX dropped secret cargo into space for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency on Saturday, the 30th rocket launch to fly into Earth’s orbit from platforms on Florida’s space coast in 2020. Falcon Flight 9 a broke an annual record for missions to reach the orbit of Florida space that has stood for 54 years.
It was the 31st major missile launch on the Florida space coast in general this year, including a high-altitude demonstration of the SpaceX Crew Dragon’s abortion system in January.
SpaceX recorded 25 launches in Florida this year – with 24 orbital missions – and the United Launch Alliance flew six times with its Atlas 5 and Delta 4-Heavy rocket families.
Prior to 2020, the previous record for space launch that reached orbit was 29, a record set in 1966. There were 31 orbital launch attempts at Cape Canaveral that year, plus two suborbital test flights of the launcher. Saturn 1B from the Apollo era, for a total of 33 space launches in Florida in 1966, according to a launch diary maintained by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks global satellite and launch activity.
A run to break this record will have to wait another year.
SpaceX’s second dedicated mission for the National Reconnaissance Bureau – and the company’s 26th and final flight – took off on Saturday at 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT).
A 229-meter-high or 70-meter Falcon 9 rocket gave the rated payload an eight-minute walk in orbit from pad 39A to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Nine 1D Merlin engines came to life and powered the 1.2 million-pound launcher on Kennedy Space Center’s 39A pad, driving Falcon 9 through clouds scattered northeast of Florida’s space coast.
The kerosene-powered launcher stopped its first-stage engines nearly two-and-a-half minutes after the flight, allowing the amplifier to move away and begin a “return” maneuver by resuming some of its engines.
The booster reversed course and made a supersonic descent back to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, where the rocket landed at a touchdown target in landing area 1 just over eight minutes after takeoff.
The reusable booster, designated B1059, has completed its fifth space trip back and forth. It was the 70th time SpaceX had successfully recovered a Falcon booster since launching its first intact landing on December 21, 2015, five months ago.
The exact purpose of the NRO payload on Saturday’s mission, codenamed NROL-108, was kept secret by the government satellite intelligence agency. The live broadcast of the SpaceX launch focused on the return of the first stage to Cape Canaveral and ended the live video from the upper stage, at the request of NRO.
The NGO said the launch was a success in a tweet a few hours after takeoff, ending the intelligence agency’s sixth launch of the year.
It was the 26th Falcon 9 launch made by SpaceX alone this year, including 25 flights from Florida and one from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. SpaceX’s previous record for most Falcon launches in a year was 21 in 2018.
“NROL-108 carries a national security payload designed, built and operated by the National Reconnaissance Bureau,” an NRO spokesman said in response to questions from Spaceflight Now. “Additional details about the payload and its mission are protected. The name or names of the contractor or contractors associated with the construction of this payload are / are also protected. “
The NROL-108 mission did not appear in any public launch program until early October, when Spaceflight Now was the first to report the mission’s existence. At that time, the mission was scheduled for October 25, but the flight was delayed several times due to changes in SpaceX launch programs and other NGO launch activities at Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX on Thursday eliminated an initial attempt to launch the NROL-108 mission to assess slightly high-pressure readings in the liquid oxygen tank of the Falcon 9 missile. Crews on pad 39A lowered the missile horizontally for inspections before lifting it. again vertically late Friday.
The NGO broke with the standard practice of procuring commercial launch outside the government-established contracting schemes.
An NRO spokesman confirmed that the agency had purchased only launch services for NROL-108, without going through the US Space Force’s national security space launch program.
“The NRO uses a variety of methods to procure launch services in support of the agency’s air reconnaissance mission, to include the partnership with the US Space Force in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program,” said an NRO spokesman. .
“In some cases, the NGO uses alternative methods to procure launch services after conducting a cumulative assessment of satellite risk tolerance, required launch data, available launch capabilities and costs – all in order to ensure the satellites to be delivered safely and securely into orbit in a timely manner, ”the spokesman said.
The program to launch the national security space is used for the most critical military and intelligence gathering satellites in the government.
The NRO has reserved SpaceX for the launch of the NROL-108 on a commercial basis, reserving the flight on the SpaceX manifesto similar to how a private satellite operator would purchase a trip. This usually costs less than a US government launch contract, which comes with additional oversight and other additional costs.
SpaceX’s previous NRO mission – NROL-76 in 2017 – was also part of a commercial launch service organized between the spy satellite agency and Ball Aerospace, a satellite manufacturer based in Boulder, Colorado. Ball Aerospace booked the launch with SpaceX on behalf of the NRO and handed over the rated payload to the NRO after it was safely in orbit.
The commercial nature of the NRO’s launch contract with SpaceX provided the Federal Aviation Administration with regulatory oversight of the mission, as if Falcon 9 were launching a private payload.
The launch was the 38th FAA-licensed commercial space launch of the year by an American company, surpassing the previous mark of 33 such missions in 2018. This number includes space launches from other U.S. space ports and flights from Rocket Lab based in the USA from a private base in New Zealand.
“The future of this industry is no longer the assumption, prediction and thinking of desires,” said Wayne Monteith, FAA’s associate administrator for space transportation. “Accelerated growth is being demonstrated. It is an increase in cadence on steroids. “
“We’ve launched more commercial space launches in the last four years than we’ve done in the last 15 years together,” Monteith said Tuesday in a virtual presentation at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium 365 forum. “In 2011, we had only one commercial space launch.”
“Next year, we should easily exceed 50 commercial launches and possibly over 100 shortly thereafter,” Monteith said. “We are seeing growing mega-constellations and we are seeing the beginnings of an exceptionally robust space tourism sector. We see initiatives for trade efforts outside the world. We see commercial companies that can return material from space. “
SpaceX will begin its launch campaign in 2021 in early January, when a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to send the Turksat 5A communications satellite into orbit January 4 from pad 40 to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Another Falcon 9 launch in Florida in mid-January will pick up dozens of small satellites on a rideshare trade mission for many customers in the US and abroad.
The purpose of NROL-108 remains a mystery
Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archaeologist and satellite motion expert, said information from airspace warnings about the orbit targeted by the NROL-108 mission reveals little information about the likely purpose of the payload.
The launch line to the northeast and the location of the re-entry of the upper stage of Falcon 9 over the Pacific Ocean suggest that the mission should place its payload in an orbit inclined about 52 degrees to the equator, according to Langbroek.
Falcon 9 reserved enough propulsion in the first stage to return to a landing at Cape Canaveral, rather than aiming for a landing at sea with a SpaceX drone. This indicated that the mission probably targets a relatively low orbit a few hundred miles above Earth, Langbroek wrote on its website, similar but not identical to the orbit of the 2017 NROL-76 mission.
The expected orbit for the NROL-108 mission does not match the NRO’s well-known fleet of optical, radar and signal satellites, expert analysts said.
A group of passionate satellite trackers will try to locate the NROL-108 payload after launch. The military does not release orbital data on US national security satellites.
“It will be interesting to see what orbit NROL-108 will reach,” Langbroek wrote. “As we noted with some launches earlier this year, the latest NRO launches appear to be ‘new’ types of payloads that are likely to be experimental / mission demonstrators and enter ‘new’ types of orbits.”
“The character of the mission is a mystery: it seems to be something new again,” he wrote.
New blog post:
“NROL-108: Another Mysterious Launch Probably Similar to NROL-76 (US 276)?” Https://t.co/yznJKJLuVr@SSC_NL pic.twitter.com/EQHZM26ykQ– Dr. Marco Langbroek (@Marco_Langbroek) December 15, 2020
Ted Molczan, a Canadian satellite observer, said that the Langbroek orbit estimate suggests that the NROL-108 payload will repeat ground cover every three days or so.
“Terrestrial routes that repeat at two to four day intervals are a common feature of NRO satellites,” Molczan told Spaceflight Now. “They allow for a quick review of targets, which is useful for recognition.
Molczan warned that while observers and analysts can deduce information about NRO satellites through orbital information, optical features and radio transmissions, the exact mission may remain secret.
“While much can be deduced from the analysis of orbits, optical characteristics and radio transmissions, the exact mission can remain secret until someone with inside knowledge brings it to the media,” Molczan said.
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