SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on Wednesday, December 29. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission, codenamed NROL-87, is a part of SpaceX’s ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense and is deemed essential for national security.
The Falcon 9 rocket carried a classified payload for the NRO, an agency responsible for designing, building, and operating the U.S. government’s reconnaissance satellites. As is typical with NRO missions, specific details about the payload, its intended orbit, and its mission were not disclosed due to national security reasons.
The launch was initially scheduled for Tuesday, December 28 but was postponed due to poor weather conditions, specifically unacceptable upper-level winds. The launch was rescheduled for the following day with a two-hour launch window opening at 9 am EST. The Falcon 9 rocket took off successfully on the second attempt, marking SpaceX’s 31st launch in 2021.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is a two-stage vehicle, with the first stage designed to be reusable. After propelling the payload towards its intended orbit, the first stage booster returned to Earth and successfully landed on a drone ship named “Just Read The Instructions” stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. This particular booster, designated B1059, marked its ninth flight with this mission.
The NROL-87 mission represents a continuation of SpaceX’s growing relationship with the Department of Defense. Historically, the NRO and other defense agencies primarily relied on United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, for their space launches. However, SpaceX has been gaining a larger share of these missions in recent years thanks to the Falcon 9’s reliability and cost-effectiveness.
SpaceX’s next scheduled launch is another Falcon 9 mission, this time for NASA. The launch will carry the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) into space, an observatory designed to study X-rays from objects like black holes and neutron stars.
The successful launch of NROL-87 concludes a busy year for SpaceX, which has been consistently breaking records in the number of launches conducted. SpaceX aims to continue this momentum into 2022, with a packed schedule of both commercial and government missions.
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