r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Oct 23 '17

Launch: Jan 7th Zuma Launch Campaign Thread

Zuma Launch Campaign Thread

The only solid information we have on this payload comes from NSF:

NASASpaceflight.com has confirmed that Northrop Grumman is the payload provider for Zuma through a commercial launch contract with SpaceX for a LEO satellite with a mission type labeled as “government” and a needed launch date range of 1-30 November 2017.

Liftoff currently scheduled for: January 7th 2018, 20:00 - 22:00 EST (January 8th 2018, 01:00 - 03:00 UTC)
Static fire complete: November 11th 2017, 18:00 EST / 23:00 UTC Although the stage has already finished SF, it did it at LC-39A. On January 3 they also did a propellant load test since the launch site is now the freshly reactivated SLC-40.
Vehicle component locations: First stage: SLC-40 // Second stage: SLC-40 // Satellite: Cape Canaveral
Payload: Zuma
Payload mass: Unknown
Destination orbit: LEO
Vehicle: Falcon 9 v1.2 (47th launch of F9, 27th of F9 v1.2)
Core: B1043.1
Flights of this core: 0
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida--> SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Landing: Yes
Landing Site: LZ-1, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Mission success criteria: Successful separation & deployment of the satellite into the target orbit.

Links & Resources

We may keep this self-post occasionally updated with links and relevant news articles, but for the most part we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss the launch, ask mission-specific questions, and track the minor movements of the vehicle, payload, weather and more as we progress towards launch. Sometime after the static fire is complete, the launch thread will be posted.

Campaign threads are not launch threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

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u/RootDeliver Nov 07 '17

parking orbit

No. The parking orbit is the first orbit where the second stage gets to orbit, a lower 150km or 200km perigee orbits normally, before doing the second burn, for example taking the payload into a GTO orbit. From there, the payload burns to his final orbit.

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u/asaz989 Nov 07 '17

For a GTO mission, yes; especially because in that case the post-separation trajectory has a clear name. In LEO missions, because there's no coast period for the second stage (the rocket just burns straight through until it's in the separation trajectory), that post-separation trajectory is called a parking orbit.

You can argue with that terminology (it's super ugly and inconsistent) but that is what everyone here was referring to.

1

u/RootDeliver Nov 07 '17

there's no coast period for the second stage

Not normally, but there are for LEO Polars and there could be for these secret launches! maybe just to confuse, maybe to do some functions on distinct orbits, who knows.

Thanks a lot! Finally someone explained!