Zuma Satellite Reportedly Destroyed Following Sunday’s Launch By SpaceX

A satellite launched Sunday by SpaceX as part of a classified government mission reportedly failed to reach orbit and was destroyed, according the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

The satellite, named Zuma, was built by Northrop Grumman Corp. and reportedly cost billions. Officials told Reuters that the satellite is a total loss, likely to have broken apart or crashed into the sea. SpaceX, however, says its own equipment didn’t fail.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwellafter issued a statement Tuesday saying “after review of all data to date, 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. Since the data reviewed so far indicates that no design, operational or other changes are needed, we do not anticipate any impact on the upcoming launch schedule.”

Northrop Grumman has declined to comment on the launch. So, details of the mission remain murky and likely won’t be cleared up until the mission is declassified.

Zuma was SpaceX’s first mission of 2018. You can watch SpaceX’s webcast of the mission here.

 

[bxr140]

Except that the release command signals would normally also have sense signals making a kelvin connection on the adapter. Tellemetry of those sigals would prove that the release signal was given and arrived on the adapter ring.

I mean, that’s a weird way to start an agreement, but I agree too.

 

[SO16]

The government said to ask SpaceX. SpaceX said all is well from their end. So...I guess all is well and those unnamed sources were incorrect (on purpose or not).

 

[mongo]

Well, it's dead now...
Eliot Dolgin on Twitter
Seriously, that was loud...

Edit: link is dead, Google meteor Michigan to check out working videos...thanks to @ccutrer for the heads up on link fail.

Update: different working link?

 

[ccutrer]

Well, it's dead now...
Eliot Dolgin on Twitter
Seriously, that was loud...

?. Page Not Found. Did you happen to screenshot it?

 

[dhanson865]

Well, it's dead now...
Eliot Dolgin on Twitter
Seriously, that was loud...

Edit: link is dead, Google meteor Michigan to check out working videos...thanks to @ccutrer for the heads up on link fail.

Update: different working link?

no sound on the "working link" so I can't say it was loud

 

[ecarfan]

Well, it's dead now...
Eliot Dolgin on Twitter
Seriously, that was loud...

That event appears to have been a classic bolide according to astronomers. Not related to the topic of this thread.

 

[ggr]

I made a small effort to track the source of the statement that the mission had failed. It's not something I really know how to do, but basically it seems to trace back to someone reporting a leak from an unnamed official. The paranoid in me has come to the conclusion that it could be deliberate disinformation ("fake news") started to cause economic damage to SpaceX. The first widespread reports came from Bloomberg and/or the WSJ, everyone else says they read it from one of those sources. Who would start such a rumor? Well, it's easy to point a finger at Roscosmos. They are currently launching 12 missions per year, with 3-4 of them being manned launches to the ISS, always carrying at least one US astronaut. But then it's currently easy to blame the Russians for anything, too.

Anyway, for the nonce I choose to believe that Zuma might not have failed at all. Even if it did I choose to believe that SpaceX performed.

 

[Nikxice]

Another vote of confidence today on twitter for SpaceX. This time from their next Falcon 9 launch customer SES Satellites.

"Looking forward to @GovSatLu 1st #satellite launch with @SpaceX. Following Zuma mission, our engineering staff have reviewed all relevant launch vehicle flight data following last Falcon-9 launcher mission. We are confident on SpaceX readiness & set for Govsat-1 launch late Jan!
12:55 PM - 17 Jan 2018"

Some related fun facts. GovSat-1 is a communications satellite. This satellite was built by Orbital ATK. The stockholders of Orbital ATK just recently approved a merger that would allow their company to be acquired by Northrup Grumman by mid 2018. Just an educated guess, bet that Orbital has deferred the payload adapter to SpaceX. Reflecting on the likely Zuma failure, the new and much larger NG might want to consider the same in the future.

 

[bxr140]

Just an educated guess, bet that Orbital has deferred the payload adapter to SpaceX.

Don’t read into it too much. There’s no link.

I remember watching a shuttle launch after the 2000 election—the reporter made a big deal about the Florida to Texas handoff (after clearing the tower) and desperately tried to link it to Florida screwing up the election.

 

[Nikxice]

Don’t read into it too much. There’s no link.

I remember watching a shuttle launch after the 2000 election—the reporter made a big deal about the Florida to Texas handoff (after clearing the tower) and desperately tried to link it to Florida screwing up the election.

Just noting that I don't know for sure SpaceX is responsible for the upcoming GovSat-1 payload adapter. Of course this would have been determined months or even years before the alleged Zuma failure.

 

[bxr140]

Just noting that I don't know for sure SpaceX is responsible for the upcoming GovSat-1 payload adapter.

Don’t read into the Zuma situation too much. That was very much an out of family configuration; there’s zero value for a manufacturer to supply the separation system for a large commercial com sat that uses industry standard adapter geometry.

It’s such a small percentage of the mission cost to begin with, and when you consider the delta between spacex’s stock offering, it’s probably quite insignificant since spacex has a higher volume. Plus, the insurance premium of bringing your own separation system probably cancels out any potential financial opportunity anyway. Finally, risk is also another big factor for the customer/operator, who of course has a business model to manage and customers of their own to service.


If I might wax speculative on Zuma, I have three potential scenarios as to why a non spacex adapter may have been used:

1. It’s quite possible Zuma was a very large/heavy single payload, and it’s quite possible Spacex doesn’t have an adapter that size (or at least one with a lot of heritage), because spacex doesn’t really do a lot of heavy LEO launches that would require such a thing. Most of their primary [single] payloads are going to use the workhorse 1194 adapter, with the 1666 or 937 likely enveloping most if not all spacex non-dragon payloads to date. The next size up is 2624, and that’s typically only used for really big ass loads (like a massive spy sat...), which spacex would have only had the opportunity to maybe do once before. Note that Cygnus also uses the 2624, mostly because of its overall dimensions. Dragon/CRS is a completely different kind of interface, since dragon doesn’t go inside a fairing.

2. It’s quite possible that Zuma was a multiple spacecraft launch (so, some kind of constellation), which would require some kind of unique dispenser system. At that point there’s not a lot of heritage regardless who builds it so the value/risk algorithms change when it comes to who’s responsible for what.

3. More tin-hat, it’s within the realm of possibility that misdirection was always the plan. The key to misdirection is control, and the only way you maintain full control is to do everything yourself. So you install and initiate your own separation.

IMHO the first two scenarios are far more likely, but they also require some sort of agreement with spacex to either lie about the mission success or, more likely, some agreement/requirement to redefine mission success. If the separation event(s?) were explicitly removed from ‘the mission’, then Gwynne has a foundation for her claim of “everything was nominal for us”.

 

[scaesare]

I'm giving more and more thought to the idea that some sort of hypersonic vehicle test (space plane, military drone, recon vehicle) might be the payload rather satellite.

It's possible the payload re-entered the atmosphere deliberately, and if it was something unique like this, I could see it being more likely they needed some sort of custom payload adapter.

 

[dpeilow]

I'm giving more and more thought to the idea that some sort of hypersonic vehicle test (space plane, military drone, recon vehicle) might be the payload rather satellite.

Funnily enough there are stories that the US might have an operational hypersonic spy plan (so-called SR-72) floating around again this week...

 

[scaesare]

Funnily enough there are stories that the US might have an operational hypersonic spy plan (so-called SR-72) floating around again this week...

Yeah... I saw that a day or two later and that immediately piqued my interest, as the "perhaps it was a vehicle test" theory had been just been posited on the forums here...

 

[ecarfan]

Funnily enough there are stories that the US might have an operational hypersonic spy plan (so-called SR-72) floating around again this week...

I have zero expertise in the field of high altitude or orbital reconnaissance vehicles, but it seems to me that modern spy satellites in LEO would make spy “planes” obsolete.

 

[dpeilow]

I have zero expertise in the field of high altitude or orbital reconnaissance vehicles, but it seems to me that modern spy satellites in LEO would make spy “planes” obsolete.

Definitely not. A hypersonic plane could get to an interesting target quickly and image it from multiple angles, not to mention from a lower altitude with potentially better cameras.

 

[mongo]

Definitely not. A hypersonic plane could get to an interesting target quickly and image it from multiple angles, not to mention from a lower altitude with potentially better cameras.

Indeed, with the additional advantage that the time of the flyover is not constrained by orbital physics.

 

[Electroman]

LEO objects can fly over an area for one minute, and can't come back to that same place for another few days. Useful in some cases to spy on N Korea or Iran or China building infrastructure that typically takes over an year+ to complete.

But not useful if you want to check some activity that happens with a day.

 

[ecarfan]

Thanks guys, always happy to learn new and interesting things.

Let the Zuma speculation continue while we wait for the FH to launch!

 

[scaesare]

Maybe Aurora is finally operational!

(Although I suspect any such considered manned vehicle would since have been scrapped in favor of unmanned drones...)

Son of Aurora = Zuma??