Early Monday, January 8th, at 01:00 UTC (20:00 EST on January 7th at the launch site in Florida), SpaceX launched a spacecraft identified only as “Zuma”. This mission has been a mystery since word of it first became public, and the mystery appears to have just deepened even more.
In October 2017, SpaceX filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission requesting permission for a “Mission 1390”. This was unusual, as no mission for the range of dates requested appeared on the SpaceX mission manifest statement. A few days later, several sources reported that the flight would launch a payload built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. government. A Northrop Grumman spokesman confirmed this, but said nothing further about the payload or its government customer. This is already unusual: classified payloads launched by the Air Force or the National Reconnaissance Office are usually identified by at least the name of the contracting agency. All that is known about this payload is that the customer is an unnamed part of the U.S. government.
Further, the intended orbit, which was not disclosed but which can be inferred from the launch site and azimuth which were disclosed as part of the range’s announcement of the exclusion area for ships and aircraft, was odd. Most spy satellites launch into polar orbit from California, or to geostationary orbit from Florida. But this satellite was headed to low Earth orbit inclined around 51 degrees to the equator—curious.
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