Yesterday, we reported on the Space X’s latest mission of a secret and special payload commissioned by the US govt named as Zuma. Zuma became the part of the first flight of Space X in 2018, was launched under an undisclosed and top-secret mission of the US govt. But the mission didn’t end successfully. Zuma failed to separate from the second stage of the rocket.
According to the report of WSJ, the classified mission of Space X recovered the first stage of the booster with a landing at its Cape Canaveral facility, while the payload that was supposed to detach in the second stage has been lost or fallen back through the Earth’s atmosphere after reaching space.
The WSJ reports the worth of the satellite in billions. If the news comes true, then this is going to be the second biggest failure of SpaceX in just over two years, after the explosion of the Facebook’s internet satellite during pre-flight preparations back in September 2016.
Zuma was launched by Space from its SLC-40 launch facility at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission was top-secret and was classified by the US government. TechCrunch asked SpaceX to comment on the matter, which denied the news of any mission failure.
“We do not comment on missions of this nature, but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally.”
This could possibly be a very major setback for SpaceX, as these kinds of contracts are only offered based on the trust of the organization’s efficiency. This bad news also comes at a crucial time for SpaceX, as it is already expediting the launch of it’s Falcon Heavy rocket which will be the first spacecraft to revolve around Mars orbit, all set to launch by the end of this month.
