- SpaceX concluded 2020 with the final Falcon 9 launch.
- Falcon 9 took off on Friday with Confidential Cargo.
- The cargo contained a satellite NROL-108 mission from NRO.
American company and a subsidiary of Tesla Automotive, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation more popularly known as SpaceX. SpaceX launched the final Falcon 9 on December 19, 2020.
SpaceX’s Second Secret Cargo
On Saturday, SpaceX hurled a classified cargo into space for the U.S. intelligence satellite agency. It was just the 30th rocket launch to fly into Earth’s orbit from pads on the Space Coast of Florida in 2020. The Falcon 9 flight broke an annual 54-year record for missions to enter orbit from the Florida spaceport. This involves a high-altitude demonstration in January of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon abort system.
At 9:00 a.m Eastern Time, the Falcon 9 carrying the NROL-108 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
The first stage of the Falcon 9 returned to Cape Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1 approximately eight minutes later, marking the company’s 70th operational recovery of a first-stage booster.
Falcon 9 was initially expected to launch on 17 December. But, it was scrubbed less than two minutes before its liftoff when the engineers put a stop to the countdown. The company postponed the launch to assess a high-pressure sensor reading in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.
NRO and SpaceX
It was SpaceX’s second NRO launch. The first was NROL-76, which flew from the same pad on a Falcon 9 in May 2017. The NRO designs and manages surveillance satellites for the U.S. government. Project NROL-108 and final orbit are classified. About eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX’s webcast ended and did not reveal the second stage.
It completed its fifth flight with the Falcon 9 booster used in the NROL-108 mission and It last flew on August 30. Although NROL-108 is a U.S. government mission, it was a launch supplied commercially and not part of the National Security Space Launch program of the U.S. Space Force. In 2017, that was also the case with NROL-76.
The NRO and other government entities purchased commercial launch services under the “delivery in orbit” arrangements. Here the acquisition of a satellite is bundled with the launch service.
