Report: Zuma Payload a Total Loss
Falcon 9 first stage comes in for a landing after launching the Zuma payload. (Credit: SpaceX)
UPDATE: Here’s an outtake from a story in the Wall Street Journal:
Lawmakers and congressional staffers from the Senate and the House have been briefed about the botched mission, some of the officials said. The secret payload—code-named Zuma and launched from Florida on board a Falcon 9 rocket—is believed to have plummeted back into the atmosphere, they said, because it didn’t separate as planned from the upper part of the rocket.
Once the engine powering the rocket’s expendable second stage stops firing, whatever it is carrying is supposed to separate and proceed on its own trajectory. If a satellite isn’t set free at the right time or is damaged upon release, it can be dragged back toward earth.
The lack of details about what occurred means that some possible alternate sequence of events other than a failed separation may have been the culprit.
ORIGINAL POST
Here’s a report from CNBC saying the secret U.S. government Zuma satellite launched on Sunday was a total loss:
Dow Jones reported Monday evening that lawmakers had been briefed about the apparent destruction of the secretive payload — code-named Zuma — citing industry and government officials.
The payload was suspected to have burned up in the atmosphere after failing to separate perfectly from the upper part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the report said.
According to Dow Jones, the absence of official word on the incident means that there could have been another chain of events.
SpaceX has said the Falcon 9 booster functioned nominally. Satellite builder Northrop Grumman has declined to comment on the classified spacecraft, which may have been worth billions of dollars. The identity of the government agency that ordered the satellite is unknown.
SpaceX said the Zuma launch was delayed from December due to a problem with the payload shroud. During the launch webcast on Sunday, the company said the payload shroud had separated as planned.
Read the full story.
52 responses to “Report: Zuma Payload a Total Loss”
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Whatever secret agency is running the project is sure good at disinformation and spreading rumor. LOL
Interesting take!
Space X said the launch was “nominal”. I personally think it went as planned, but the agency…I’m betting CIA, wants the world to think they don’t have a new toy to play with. Look at my pretty assistant, while I perform some MAGIC!
Launch is only part of the mission, but all SpaceX was responsible for on this one, if the payload adapter failed, its N-G’s fault and still considered at least a partial success on SX’s end, (though recorded as glass half empty partial failure) though due to secretive nature it might be listed under “other”
Oh no
At this point it could have easily been Zuma itself, a dead payload
Where do Stage 2 usually splash down..?
If Russia still have a navy, they be sending a sub there now. 😛
Around south Africa,
Don’t expect much to have survived re-entry, or any of that to be floating.
Apparently this is just miss information, as it showed up on NORAD catalog as in orbit, looking at another comment
The pre-launch NOTAMs showed S2 reentry after a couple of orbits, which matches a deorbit burn over north Africa..
IF it failed to separate this would likely be on Northrop-Grumman: last November Wired reported N-G opted to use their own payload adapter in place of SpaceX’s. If the F9 upper stage sent the separation signal, SpaceX would seem to be off the hook.
https://www.wired.com/story…
Yep, NG have to take the responsibility then.
Say if this is a sat with low observable features, where would one release it, or do the separation with the least amount of eyes on it then? Somewhere over the Indian Ocean…?
I suspect that it was the payload, not the rocket
some hints are that this might be disinformation. if the rocket venting pictures over Khartom are to be believed…and the pilot is reliable…then the vehicle went into amuch higher orbit then “rumored”. the second stage is pictured venting 2 plus hours into the flight
the payload shroud goes right on the mark
Confirmed miss information, someone found Zuma on NORAD’s catalog for orbit tracking and it is in orbit (based on Launch date and ownership marking)
there are a few metrics
1. the “ruse” worked and the bird has slipped everyones chain. normally what you see in these things is that the last stage is blowing down and theh payload is “ahead” but….thats only true if the payload didnt have some propulsion of its own like say a solid fuel payload module or even another liquid stage…then by this time ie 2 plus hours into the flight …well its “gone”
2. the payload never left the second stage and they wll went into the brink
3. there is some test associated with reentry…but the spinning makes me dubious…we will see if the satobs folks can find it
Since Falcon 9 did put the 2nd stage and payload into orbit, it got a NORAD tracking number. But because it’s “black”, there are no TLEs to go along with that tracking number.
That said, speculation is that the payload didn’t separate from its payload adapter (I believe made by Northrup Grumman), so when the Falcon 9 2nd stage did its reentry burn, it deorbited the payload too.
But I’ve also read that the 2nd stage wouldn’t deorbit with the payload still attached, so it’s quite difficult to know what to believe.
They would de orbit with payload attached if it couldn’t detatch, they have to for orbital hygiene
That’s what I thought. I have read that the second stage does a de-orbit burn then vents its tanks so that there is no possibility of them exploding. Exploding upper stage tanks have happened in the past and it does create lots of smaller orbital debris which is harder to track and avoid than an intact upper stage.
And drain, and shut down the batteries if they are higher orbit
Correct the African venting event was predicted by Ted Molczan of Canada based on the NOTAM given for the reentry impact zone in the Indian Ocean. Mr Molczan proposed a much higher orbit for spacecraft release on the order of 1000 miles (correction: km).
Nobody else noted the fact, that the original report of a “failure” of the Zuma mission seems to have originated from WSJ’s Andy Pasztor?
Doesn’t that guy have a history of writing “unfavorably” about SpaceX?
Makes sense that he would do it.
Incorrectly declaring a mission failure would seriously damage whatever reputation Andy Pasztor has left. The only thing we currently can verify is that the first stage performed according to plan, and the second stage deorbited about where it was supposed to. If Zuma is still in orbit, I suspect it should only take a day or two for the amateur sat trackers to find it.
Well not necessarily if the payload is in a different orbit than it was believed to be inserted to. Spaceflight 101 reports that for example the OTV-5 (X-37B launched on Falcon9) also has not been identified conclusively since it was launched:
http://spaceflight101.com/f…
Really ? I didn’t think it was possible to hide anything from Ted Molczan and crew for very long. I’m pretty sure they will track down the current orbit of the X-37 any day now. They already had some sort of guess as to what the purpose of Zuma was before launch, and from there, I assume they use it to make a semi-educated guess as to the predicted orbit.
As an aside, does anyone remember drinking that swill that was marketed under the “Zuma” brand name ? I’m not surprised there was another failure for the “Zuma” brand. Shame on NG.
If memory serves, I think said swill was called Zima, not Zuma. Zuma is the name of a beach in So. CA.
it won’t be visible under the right lighting conditions for a few weeks in the northern hemisphere.
The point is that the current theory is that the payload didn’t separate from the 2nd stage so when the 2nd stage deorbited itself (as planned) it took the payload with it on a destructive reentry. The payload adapter was made by Northrup Grumman. For some reason they chose not to use the standard SpaceX provided Falcon 9 payload adapter. So, it’s quite likely the failure was not the fault of the SpaceX Falcon 9 at all.
So why then would WSJ and/or Andy Pasztor put SpaceX’s name prominently in the quite negative headline? Isn’t that a tad misleading?
It’s a simple explanation of why SpaceX is in the title of the article. Who cares to read about NG satellite launches ? Adding SpaceX or Elon Musk to the title is commonly called “click bait”. It brings more readers to the site, and it gives it a better chance of “trending” on multiple sites.
I suppose NG is ultimately responsible for the mission, since they built the satellite and contracted for the launch. But, besides the fact that the payload required a non-standard adapter, who is responsible for mission integration and testing ? Was that all on NG, SpaceX, or shared ? Did someone even verify the interface between the SpaceX control SW and NG payload adapter to make sure the payload gets properly deployed ?
It seems to have been the case that Northrop Grumman not only built the payload, but also the payload adapter and, in addition, did all the pre-launch payload prep themselves, including sealing the payload up in the fairing. SpaceX was handed, in essence, a black box – or, more colloquially, a pig in a poke.
Except that this was a secret mission. So, SpaceX didn’t need to know the details of the payload, so they didn’t. Since Northrup Grumman built the adapter they surely had people with the clearance to know the details about how the satellite needed to be mounted and launched. It’s my understanding Northrup Grumman provided SpaceX with the payload already installed on the adapter.
As for integration of the Falcon 9 and the Northrup Grumman payload adapter, that responsibility might have been shared, somewhat. I’m sure an accident investigation will determine all possible likely causes and have recommendations for both companies so this doesn’t happen in the future.
But in terms of statistics, it was still a successful SpaceX launch since the payload was delivered to earth orbit. But this is also clearly a failed mission since the secret satellite was possibly dead in orbit from the start and almost certainly burned up on reentry .
SpaceX didn’t need to know the purpose of the payload, but they certainly did need to know some details, such as how much it weighs and what orbit it is supposed to get inserted into. They can’t do mission planning without some details. For instance, how do they plan when to discard the payload fairing ? How do they interface to the customer’s payload adapter ? There are going to be some lessons learned here. You can’t just wave the sat failure away and say it was all the customer’s responsibility.
The one that may have caused this failure would be “How do they interface to the customer’s payload adapter?” For that, they need information from Northrup Grumman, who built the payload adapter. If that’s where this whole thing went wrong, then the two companies will point the finger at each other.
This is where things often go wrong in aerospace. You need to design hardware to interface to some other hardware you’re not allowed to have (top secret, proprietary, radioactive RTG, and etc.). So, how do you test the integration? Good question, good question…
In fact, not 5 minutes ago one colleague of mine was reminiscing with another colleague about past failures. They were all integration problems where an engineer wasn’t allowed to actually have the thing he or she needed to interface with. Frustrating.
Hans Gruber: “If you steal $600 no one cares, but if you steal $600 million then they will find you unless they think you’re already dead”
Just sayin’….
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Spacex claims that the F9 did everything it was supposed to do and that it was successful.
Yeah, wsj is claiming SX failure, but others in.the know are saying that zuma failed.
Easier to blame the rocket, especially one like f9, even though there is more that can go wrong with the satellite. Mares the record but hopefully it can get cleared up quickly so it doesn’t hurt business
It is possible that F9 had a nominal/successful launch as SpaceX said, and that the payload failed to separate at the same time. SpaceX was not responsible for the payload separation on this one (the payload and PAF were built and integrated by NG, and given to SpaceX encapsulated for launch). This take could explain both the SpaceX announcement and the loss reports.
This is what is believed to be the case
And N-G made a custom payload adapter, soooo….
Wall Street Journal is speculating here. There is no official confirmation of the fate of Zuma. My guess is that the US Government will not issue such a confirmation until Zuma, whatever it is, is no longer secret. So, my guess is that we should be prepared to wait decades for an official statement.
SpaceX statement from Gwynne Shotwell says “For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly…”
So perhaps the scales need to tip more toward Northrop Grumman?, or we may never be told for sure.
From 17:15 to 19:15, there was an awkward pause in the SpaceX Zuma mission video coverage waiting for fairing separation that was to occur any second. What could have delayed something that takes seconds to almost 2 minutes? Could the fairing got hung up on the satellite, tweaking it on its mount to where it couldn’t break free later at separation from 2nd stage?
On civilian missions, there is a forward-facing camera on the top of the F9 S2 that shows the fairing sep and, later, the payload deployment. On secret missions, this camera is almost certainly not present. When the camera is there, the downlinked video is part of the real-time webcast. When it’s not there to provide cues to the webcast hosts, they have to wait to get a confirmation of fairing sep from one of the mission control people.
You’re right about the camera being turned off due to the secrecy of the mission. That being said, isn’t the timing of the separation programmed into the mission computer to where it is known exactly what time the fairing will separate? Is there a variance in the mission that would delay fairing separation from the preplanned timing?
If it was a fairing issue, my guess is SpaceX disclosed the margin of error of fairing deployment, and Northrop and the customer decided it was worth the risk. That would make Gwynne Shotwell’s comments correct.
Yes, the timing of fairing sep is known in advance. But only on civilian missions does the downlinked video provide a real-time confirmation of fairing sep. Absent the video stream, the on-air webcast hosts have to get confirmation from someone in mission control. This sometimes takes a minute or two as the webcast hosts are not part of mission control and don’t have access to mission control consoles. Such delays in confirmation of mission events on the streaming webcasts have happened numerous times before, usually anent 1st stage landing events on the drone ships when the video feed is inclined to be wonky.
Unfortunately, as seems to be de rigeur for anything connected to SpaceX, there are a lot of – how to put this nicely – easily excitable folks out there who look for any excuse, however small, to get their rhetorical panties in a twist and dump on the company by spouting nonsense.
Good points…
FWIW, I’m a huge SX fan — probably too much so. Still, I had noticed the pause during the webcast and it stood out. That being said, your explanation has merit and hopefully is the reason for the delayed confirmation.
If it is a payload fairing issue. Didn’t the last Falcon 9 flew out of Vandenberg AFB in December and delivered 10 Iridium Next comsats without any issues with the payload fairing. AFAIK SpaceX only used one type of payload fairing.
IMO the Northrop-Grumann provided payload adapter is likely to be the cause of any mishaps in this mission.
Whatever the payload fairing issue was, SpaceX delayed the mission for two months to look into it. SpaceX only needed 4-1/2 months to figure out what caused the Amos-6 failure – a much more complicated issue – and get back to flying again. I don’t think “rush” quite describes what went on here.
Falcon 9’s have no hydrogen tanks.
Neither of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 failures occurred at liftoff.
Your comment about the Challenger is irrelevant in addition to being borderline incomprehensible.
Don’t look now, but SX is classifying it as a successful launch.
That means that any failure beyond SX is NG’s issues.
However, I suspect that Zuma has either completed its mission, OR is still there.
At this point, it’s not even clear that the Zuma payload “hung up,” whether for a thermal reason or any other. The evidence we have suggests strongly that it did not. USAF, for example, has now put up an orbital object catalog entry for Zuma. Given that there is abundant photographic evidence that the F9 stage 2 de-orbited itself into the Indian Ocean, as planned, its hard to see why USAF would have done this if Zuma had also gone into the drink along with the S2.
If Zuma, wherever it is, has actually failed – and this story is not simply some exercise in deliberate disinformation – I think that has to be laid at Northrop Grumman’s doorstep, not SpaceX’s. One can only hope that Zuma’s failure mode had nothing to do with thermal effects, given how many thermal-related problems Northrop Grumman has faced over the years in building the severely troubled James Webb Space Telescope.
Your speculation that Zuma is actually alive, well and hiding in plain sight via stealth technology of some new sort has at least some faint plausibility given Northrop Grumman’s long experience in building stealthy objects. As Churchill said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”