SpaceX moved NROL-85 from the Cape to Vandenberg at no extra cost, in exchange for reusing booster
SpaceX moved NROL-85 from the Cape to Vandenberg at no extra cost, in exchange for reusing booster
spacenews.com
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SpaceX F9 - NROL-85 - SLC-4E
- Thread starter Grendal
- Start date
spacenews.com
Interesting pivot. The "had to go to a different orbit" is pretty odd given Falcon's ability to go polar on the eastern range...maybe NRO wanted to bump up the altitude and that exceeded Falcon's dogleg capacity? If the payload is two sats as speculated, there's also a chance that NRO wants to maximize rocket capacity to place both satellites on station rather than use the sats' on-board capacity.
Nice upside for SX regardless--they get to add cycles on an existing west coast tail while removing cycles from an east coast one, and then either add back a "new" launch to the busy eastern range or incrementally deconflict the manifest. And, of course, they get to set new precedent.
Nice upside for SX regardless--they get to add cycles on an existing west coast tail while removing cycles from an east coast one, and then either add back a "new" launch to the busy eastern range or incrementally deconflict the manifest. And, of course, they get to set new precedent.
