United Launch Alliance is gearing up for the final West Coast launch of the single-stick Delta IV rocket, planned from Vandenberg’s SLC-6 at 21:00 UTC on Thursday with the classified NROL-47 satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office to replenish the U.S. spy satellite fleet.
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There are unconfirmed reports the secretive Zuma spacecraft may have been dead on arrival in orbit or has even re-entered the atmosphere after failing to separate from the Falcon 9 second stage.
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral under a veil of darkness Sunday night, both literally and figuratively with launch occurring at 1:00 UTC Monday morning, carrying into orbit the top-secret Zuma spacecraft which, from a public perspective, has all traits of a black project.
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:00 UTC on January 8, 2018 with the classified Zuma payload for Northrop Grumman and an unnamed U.S. government agency.
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After almost two months of delays and a launch pad switch, SpaceX is finally ready to launch the classified Zuma spacecraft for Northrop Grumman and a shadowy U.S. government organization that has yet to be named.
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The year 2017 saw a total of 90 known orbital launch attempts from seven nations and space ports in eight different countries. 2017 had the second most orbital launch attempts of any year in the current century, short of 92 launches in 2014 and showing a slight increase from 2016 that had 85 known launch attempts.
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Two days after placing an Earth-imaging satellite into orbit, China was in action again on Monday for the country’s fourth launch of the month and the final expected Chinese mission in 2017, involving a Long March 2C rocket lifting the third group of Yaogan-30 electromagnetic-sensing satellites into orbit.
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China sent the second satellite of the LKW constellation into orbit on Saturday via a Long March 2D rocket, coming less than three weeks after the first LKW satellite reached orbit in what observers suspected was the first launch in a new series of reconnaissance spacecraft flying under the cover of land surveying missions.
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Kosmos 1346 – a Tselina-D Electronic Intelligence Satellite – re-entered the atmosphere on December 17, 2017 after over 35 years in orbit.
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China was in action again on Sunday, launching a Long March 3B rocket carrying the Chinese-built AlcomSat-1 communications satellite for operation by the Algerian Space Agency as a dual-purpose spacecraft for civilian and military communications.
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China conducted its 15th orbital launch of the year on Sunday, involving a Long March 2D rocket lifting the LKW-1 imaging satellite into orbit.
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Coming on the heels of a failed launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome earlier in the week, Russia successfully launched a Soyuz 2-1B rocket from the country’s prime military launch site at Plesetsk, placing the Lotos-S1 No. 803 electronic intelligence-gathering satellite
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China was in action for the second time this week on Friday with the launch of a trio of Yaogan-30 satellites atop a Long March 2C rocket to join a growing constellation of what are believed to be electronic intelligence-gathering satellites residing in non-synchronous Low Earth Orbits 600 Kilometers in altitude.
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China launched a Long March 4C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 18:40 UTC on Tuesday, carrying into orbit the Fengyun-3D weather satellite, joining China’s polar-orbiting constellation of meteorological satellites
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SpaceX successfully conducted the Static Fire Test of the Falcon 9 rocket tasked with the ultra-secretive Zuma mission as early as Wednesday night from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
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A European Vega rocket lit up the night over the French Guiana coast line on Tuesday, blasting off with a high-resolution communications satellite built by a European industry consortium for operation by the Kingdom of Morocco as a sharp eye in the sky for civilian benefits like environmental monitoring and mapping while doubling as a national security tool in border and coastal surveillance.
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A European Vega rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center at 1:42:31 UTC on November 8, 2017 carrying into orbit the Mohammed VI-A satellite for the Kingdom of Morocco.
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