On January 8, 2018 Elon Musk’s rocket company launched a super top secret spy satellite
with stealth laser nuclear impact hypersonic gliding ballistic planet destroying capabilities
and it totally blew up and SpaceX super failed.
Guys.
We need to talk.
After countless emails, tweets, and YouTube comments asking for my thoughts on the ZUMA
mission, it’s time we separate facts from rumors and conspiracies and do some journalism
instead of sensationalism.
We’re going to lay down the actual known, observable and concrete facts.
We’ll do this by showing you what we know of the mission itself and compare that to
other similar previously classified missions.
Then we'll to clarify what things are just simply rumors.
I kind of can’t believe I’m actually doing this one but, never the less, let's get started...
On January 8th, 2018, SpaceX launched what appeared to be a perfectly normal mission
carrying a classified payload simply known as ZUMA.
The webcast was normal, well at least for a classified mission, showing the separation
of the first and second stage and then only tracking the first stage as it headed back
to land at Cape Canaveral.
The webcast wrapped up, we all said good night and cheers to SpaceX and the payload's manufacturer,
Northrop Grumman, and we all went on our merry ways.
But soon after what was thought to be a perfectly successful mission, the Wall Street Journal
and Bloomberg reported that the ZUMA payload failed to get into orbit, both citing unknown
government officials.
This caused a fury of speculation and half baked conspiracy theories, even leading to
some awkward press conference events where one reporter was demanding that the department
of defense speaks up and spills the beans.
This is a billion dollar satellite, it's been four days, was it a success or failure?
What's the fate of the satellite?
Again, I would have to refer you to them, and that's that's that's the answer.
(but it's not a SpaceX satellite) General, I mean, is the satellite, (General - I'm with
Diane, we're not going to be able to give any more information)
The most common theory is that the payload didn’t detach from the upper stage of the
Falcon 9 and wound up reentering along with the upper stage.
Just a real quick reminder here before we move on.
SpaceX simply launches a payload to an intended destination and that’s the end of their mission.
They are a launch provider, and their job is to deliver something to space.
This is not much different from UPS dropping off a box and having the customer sign for it.
What happens once it’s in the customers hands no longer has to do with UPS, or in
this case, SpaceX.
Ok folks.
Time to sit back and go over what we actually KNOW.
ZUMA first appeared on the public’s radar mid October, 2017 with information found in
an FCC filings that suggested plans for an upcoming Falcon 9 rocket launch with an unidentified
payload that was to launch about one month away from the filing.
SpaceX has to apply for special authority from the FCC to use telemetry transmitters
and receivers for tracking every launch, just like any other launch providers.
The only strange things here was how quickly the launch was to occur from its initial filings
to the launch date and the fact that the payload was entirely unknown.
Otherwise, it was actually pretty normal here.
The next bit we learned was that no government agency was stepping forward to claim responsibility,
unlike more normal classified launches for the National Reconnaissance office, or the
Air Force or any other of the dozen or so military and intelligence agencies.
BUT it’s not unheard of to have an entirely unclaimed satellite launch.
As a matter of fact a similar launch occurred on May 26, 2009 known only as PAN.
It launched on top of ULA’s Atlas V rocket and very little was and is known about the mission.
About the only thing we do know is it went to geostationary orbit and was built by Lockheed Martin.
Another similar launch occurred on September 16, 2014 with the successful launch of CLIO
onboard another Atlas V. Again, little is known, but it’s thought to be a brother
to the PAN satellite.
SpaceX has previously launched two classified missions so far, the National Reconnaissance
Office’s NROL-76 which launched on May 1, 2017 and one for the Air Force with OTV-5
which launched the Air Force’s secret Boeing X-37B space plane on September 7, 2017.
But again, these are a little more standard scenarios because we know which government
agency was the customer.
The next thing we know is that Northrup Grumman manufactured the payload which they announced
late October 2017, but, no more information was given.
Northrup Grumman is a very large aerospace and defense technology company that’s famously
manufactured iconic vehicles like the B-2 Stealth Bomber and they're the primary contractor
for the upcoming 8.7 billion dollar James Webb Space Telescope.
We also know where the payload headed.
Based on the Air Force’s published exclusion zone, it shows the rocket headed on a 51 degree
inclination to the equator.
This is very similar to the International Space Station, meaning it does cover a good
amount of the globe.
We also know there was a little bug with the payload fairing which caused SpaceX to stand
down from their first target launch date of November 15th, 2017.
They tweeted “Standing down on ZUMA mission to take a closer look at data from recent
fairing testing for another customer.”
This isn’t particularly noteworthy, and doesn’t give us any glimpses into the mission.
Stuff like this happens often and if something pops up on one manufactured part, it’s always
better to test all other parts manufactured the same way.
During the launch we noticed that it must be a fairly light weight payload considering
how early the first stage separated from the second stage.
At around just 2:22 seconds after liftoff, we see main engine cut off, or MECO while
the rocket is traveling around 6,000 km/h.
Main engine cut off and the velocity were almost identical to the CRS-13 mission which
SpaceX successfully launched on December 15th, 2017.
This was a pretty light payload, weighing in at just 2,205 kgs or 4,850 pounds.
So the Zuma payload is probably in that same ballpark.
The heavier and/or the higher the orbit of the payload, the more work the first stage
needs to do.
That’s why missions that go to a higher geostationary orbit have to land on a droneship
down range and why missions to low earth orbit can actually turn around and land back on land.
Zuma also appeared on space-track.org with the designation USA 280 which actually suggests
that it did make it into orbit since they don’t seem to register something that doesn’t
make at least one full successful orbit.
All craft that make it above the Karman line, which is 100km’s or 62 miles in altitude
are considered suborbital until they complete 1 orbit.
Next we have visual confirmation of a good deorbit burn from a pilot named Peter Horstink.
Peter is a Dutch pilot who was flying a 747-400 from Amsterdam to Johannesburg and spotted
the spectacular scene of a deorbit burn while flying at around 10,000 meters or 35,000 feet
above Sudan.
Most launch providers intentionally deorbit the spent second stage after successful payload
deployment whenever possible to help keep space junk to a minimum.
After a successful deorbit burn, it’s normal for the stage to vent its remaining fuel so
to minimize potential explosions.
So, what Peter caught while flying was the venting after a successful deorbit burn of
the upper stage.
This is excellent outside confirmation of the second stage performing nominally.
Dr. Marco Langbroek wrote a great article all about this deorbit event and was even
able to determine based on the star background, the approximate altitude of the upper stage.
He calculated it was around 900 km’s.
Check out his in depth run down, I’ve got a link in the description.
Very cool!
The last bit of information we have is from SpaceX themselves who had to release a statement
after several articles came out saying “Mysterious SpaceX satellite failed” and other potentially
misleading headlines.
SpaceX President, Gwynne Shotwell released this statement about the mission,
“For clarity: after review of all data, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday
night.
If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately.
Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false.
Due to the classified nature of the payload, no further comment is possible.”
To add to this, two frequent customers, SES and Iridium, who both have upcoming flights
on the Falcon 9 have come out publicly to mention that they’ve also reviewed all relevant
data and they’re still confident with SpaceX.
And really, this probably is the most information we’ll receive.
BUT, it says a lot!
If SpaceX had no problems on their end, and is not standing down for any kind of review
of future launches, like they would if there was a failure, it certainly points to there
being no issues on their end.
Anything beyond this point is simply unknown, but nonetheless, here’s the unknowns.
It’s rumored that SpaceX didn’t supply the payload adapter that releases the payload
from the upper stage like they would for a normal customer.
Instead, on this occasion it sounds like the payload adapter was provided by Northrup Grumman.
This leads to speculation that if the payload had failed to detach from the upper stage
it would be accurate for SpaceX to announce they had no issues, even if the actual primary
mission had failed on Northrup Grumman’s end.
If the payload did fail to detach from the upper stage, there’s not too much you could
do.
Rockets in general are pre programmed.
Not just SpaceX’s rockets, but all rockets.
There are only a few commands that can be sent in flight, including the go boomy feature,
but changing a pre-programmed flight input isn’t one of the things they can change
on the fly.
The next unknown is if the payload didn’t deorbit, what’s the current state of the
payload?
Is it operational?
Did anything actually go wrong?
To this, we just might never know.
And that’s perfectly fine.
After all, it’s a classified payload, with potentially sensitive and vital defense capabilities.
If a bunch of YouTube armchair engineers could figure out what exactly it is, what it’s
doing and all other details of Zuma, that wouldn’t bode very well for the United States’
classified missions, would it?
Sorry if that’s not very exciting, but this was classified, its classified for a reason
and will remain that way until it’s mission is no longer critical or of relevance.
And although it’s super fun to speculate, only a small handful of people actually have
the answers here.
And that’s just the way it’s meant to be...
That being said, guess what!
I still think it’d be fun to take a poll on what you think happened.
So, fill it out and let’s see who thinks what, because why not.
Feel free to tell me what you think happened with the Zuma launch in the comments below,
but please, let’s not turn this into some kind of witch hunt.
Although I won't be doing any future Zuma updates, most likely, I do have a lot of really
cool videos coming out soon and I can't wait for you to see them!
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I’m Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Bringing space down to Earth for everyday people.