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.

 

[Grendal]

Anybody believe that all data from a rocket launch problem has been thoroughly analyzed in <3 days, and root cause(s) have been definitively determined?

Usually multiple things must go wrong to lose a spacecraft or aircraft.

If the problem happened after the satellite was released by SpaceX into the proper orbit, which is what all evidence shows, then there is nothing to be determined by SpaceX. That is also why (which is some of the evidence) they are continuing with normal operations.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

Anybody believe that all data from a rocket launch problem has been thoroughly analyzed in <3 days, and root cause(s) have been definitively determined?

Usually multiple things must go wrong to lose a spacecraft or aircraft.

The most likely outcome is that none of us will find out the truth of what really happened anytime soon, due to the classified nature of the mission.

We can only infer from continued activity at SpaceX that there was no issue with the Falcon 9. Falcon Heavy rolled out for tests and possible static fire tomorrow. Gwynne Shotwell says that the SES launch for later this month is still on schedule. If there was an issue with the 2nd stage of Falcon 9, none of this would be going on. They would stand down to diagnose. And obviously, the 1st stage has raised no issues as it performed nominally.

IIRC, your personal application for sainthood isn't looking grand either. Neither is mine, but my glass house is actually Lexan.
I said he is a real member, not a ghost ID. And that he's into EVs. You disagree. Bully for you sir! Carry on!@

You might have a point, if I cared about sainthood, which I couldn’t care less about.

And you’ve clearly missed the point. Nowhere did I say anything about sock puppets. What I said was that your characterization was incomplete.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

No, Bro1999 is an EV enthusiast who has provided good info to the EV community.

No idea of how much experience he has with space programs though.

Uhh, no, McRat he is not an EV enthusiast, and he's only here to antagonize. I know you're both GM enthusiasts, but you need to remove the blinders. Here's a snippet of his comments on Tesla and Tesla enthusiasts on another site:

An Up Close Look At The Tesla Model 3 Road Trip Experience

He comments similarly in most Tesla articles. And we've all seen how he comments here.

 

[Doug_G]

I would like to point out that accusations of sock puppet accounts and negative comments about an individual member are all personal attacks.

Personal attacks are against the TMC terms of service.

If these attacks continue we will be forced to move about half this thread to snippiness.

 

[bro1999]

My kids got some sock monkeys today. Apply some Trump "logic" and you can somehow end up with me being a sock puppet I guess?

 

[jimmy_d]

This incident has similarities with the NYT Broder incident which tried to pull down Tesla. In that case, Tesla exposed the author's lies because they had full details showing exactly how the 'failure' was staged. As @mongo points out, SpaceX collects huge amounts of telemetry data documenting what happens on every launch down to hundredths of a second. They very well know whether the satellite separated from 2nd stage and the actions/times of what was handled by the NG payload adapter.

Tracking the relative doppler shift of radio emissions from the 2nd stage at 2 or 3 ground stations can provide accurate orbital parameters. This method is much more accurate and much easier than trying to track a low earth payload over the middle of the ocean using telescopic tracking.

If you don't want observers to be able to find your payload easily you are going to want the 2nd stage to be radio silent for the last part of it's final burn and to stay silent until after it begins it's reentry burn. This is the period of time during which payload separation occurs. Additionally the 2nd stage apparently ditched into the Indian Ocean, which might well be pretty far from friendly and highly secure ground stations. It does not seem unlikely to me that, for this kind of mission, SpaceX is unable to get much telemetry from the 2nd stage regarding events surrounding the payload separation.

 

[Bobfitz1]

The likelihood of them being able to complete any kind of comprehensive failure analysis in the timeframe relevant here seems low, though. Acknowledgeing that better in their statement would IMO have made them sound more accurate and thus more believable overall to a wider audience.

Live telemetry gives you live data, but it doesn't necessarily directly tell you what went wrong - and, thus, who is to blame.

The likelihood of them being able to complete any kind of comprehensive failure analysis in the timeframe relevant here seems low, though. Acknowledgeing that better in their statement would IMO have made them sound more accurate and thus more believable overall to a wider audience.

Live telemetry gives you live data, but it doesn't necessarily directly tell you what went wrong - and, thus, who is to blame.

I find it far more likely that SpaceX telemetry analysts have the capability to quickly inspect the small portion of total data that shows if the separation occurred and 2nd stage went through it's deorbit normally, than that your asserting they could not. As it has been pointed out, verifying everything went as expected with your hardware is much less time consuming than tracking down the root cause of a failure of your hardware.

 

[bro1999]

We'll find out what went wrong (or at least who to officially blame) sooner or later.
Lawmakers Look Into SpaceX Launch That Ended With Lost Satellite

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

This whole thing is comical.

Unknown source: ???????????
Press: SpaceX dirt? I have SpaceX dirt! Yaaaay!
Other Press: repeat SpaceX dirt, repeat SpaceX dirt
SpaceX: absolutely nothing went wrong at our end
Northrop Grumman: no comment
Press: repeat SpaceX dirt, repeat SpaceX dirt

Rumor and supposition is what happens in an information vacuum. The number of news media stories just reflects the level of interest. We don't know. We want to know.

 

[ICUDoc]

So who thinks that Northrop Grumman will use SpaceX again in the future? If they do, what might that tell us about Falcon 9's function on this occasion?
Also, is NG publicly listed?

 

[McRat]

Northrup Grumman is a serious aerospace development engine. Look at it's 5 year stock history (NOC).

It's one of the few large MFRs that are non-Union. Union workers don't fit in well. They pay more than the union shops, but they want you to work. Resumes with good work experience at Northrup are worth twice what a Boeing resume is worth. IMO.

 

[Grendal]

We'll find out what went wrong (or at least who to officially blame) sooner or later.
Lawmakers Look Into SpaceX Launch That Ended With Lost Satellite

Senator Shelby is not a good source for anything concerning SpaceX. His state receives billions in NASA and Air Force funding (because his appropriations committee makes that happen) and ULA maintains operations there. So it gains his state and himself to smear SpaceX in any way he can to maintain the status quo for that funding. ULA, Lockheed, and Boeing aerospace are all threatened by the low pricing, innovation, and reusability that SpaceX has brought into the market. SLS is Shelby's cash cow baby and so any opinion from him is as suspect as it gets.

The factual reality is that any number of politicians likely have no clue what this launch was about and certainly don't have inside knowledge on what occurred. So for them to say they want an investigation is really saying that they'd like to spend some taxpayer money to create an investigation to make themselves look like they are doing something. The fact that SpaceX is still active in operations says a lot more than this does.

Here is a Congressional meeting where Elon points out how SpaceX was cut out of military contracts and Shelby sides with ULA:

 

[Electroman]

Interesting.. let us assume for a moment that this is indeed a Falcon 9 anomaly. Obviously NG would be briefed about that by SpaceX, or NG would know from their own telemetry that they get from the satellite. If that is the case, then there is no reason why NG cannot come out say, launch failed due to Falcon 9 malfunction.

The fact that they are quiet means: something went wrong in their part of the process, or the satellite is healthy and orbiting fine.

 

[alloverx]

Satellite is fine; its designed to be invisible

 

[McRat]

Interesting.. let us assume for a moment that this is indeed a Falcon 9 anomaly. Obviously NG would be briefed about that by SpaceX, or NG would know from their own telemetry that they get from the satellite. If that is the case, then there is no reason why NG cannot come out say, launch failed due to Falcon 9 malfunction.

The fact that they are quiet means: something went wrong in their part of the process, or the satellite is healthy and orbiting fine.

The reason why Northrup says "we cannot comment on classified operations" is most likely because they cannot comment on classified operations.

It's not Facebook.

 

[oktane]

Stingray in the sky satellite was destroyed and never reached orbit. Bullshit.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Just because SpaceX says the rocket "did everything correctly" does not mean they were not at fault. Its quite possible that there was a communications issue between NG and SpaceX (either during the design phase or during the launch itself) that caused the failure. Something where SpaceX thinks it all went well, but because of a misunderstanding between them the NG adapter didn't respond properly.

I don't think the public will ever hear anything more about the failure (assuming it did indeed fail), and we are all just rampantly speculating about what could have happened based on our preconceived biases. Personally I think its very likely that NG was at fault, but that SpaceX shares some of the blame as well.

Very fair message IMO too.

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

This discussion is a lot like the Tesla Semi thread. I have a curiosity about the topic, but absolutely no knowledge. The contributors above have described things about the launch that I could not get on the evening news. I have no reason to even know that a launch had a customer doing things that the launch company did not control. I had no reason to know that some satellites go quiet on purpose. I had no reason to know that NASA was in competition with Space X and that FUD was a thing in this field.
So - to all the pro and con commenters above...clap, clap, clap. Thank you for opening my eyes and educating me in areas where I have no basis for learning as I do here. I learned a lot from the Truckers during the Semi discussions - things I never even considered as things to know. Same here.
If this thread is burned out now, thank you for the trip. It was fun for me.

 

[mongo]

I know reasoning by analogy is bad, so feel free to skip this post.

If I had a preschooler, and, after picking up 2 co-workers I carpool with, I dropped the child off at daycare on the way in, and while at daycare I signed them in, and when I got to work, I retrieved my briefcase from the back of the car where I had placed it on the carseat after the drop off, then someone asks at work if I dropped said child off at daycare, would the coworkers say yes along with me (possibly after peeking out the window at the car anyway)?

How much time should I take to answer the question to not be suspicious?
Should I retrace my route?
Call the daycare?
What is there to verify? We're not taking about a missing binky here.

 

[McRat]

I know reasoning by analogy is bad, so feel free to skip this post.

If I had a preschooler, and, after picking up 2 co-workers I carpool with, I dropped the child off at daycare on the way in, and while at daycare I signed them in, and when I got to work, I retrieved my briefcase from the back of the car where I had placed it on the carseat after the drop off, then someone asks at work if I dropped said child off at daycare, would the coworkers say yes along with me (possibly after peeking out the window at the car anyway)?

How much time should I take to answer the question to not be suspicious?
Should I retrace my route?
Call the daycare?
What is there to verify? We're not taking about a missing binky here.

Better analogy:

You program your FSD car to drop off a kid at Area 51. Your car does not send you any warning messages, and it returns home. Nobody from Area 51 will acknowledge they accept kids.

You are legally allowed to say you drop off kids, but not where. The kid's parents when asked if they have kids reply, "no comment".