That Falcon Heavy USSF-52 Mission Found Deeper Problems

The launch of the USSF-52 mission carrying the X-37B space plane that was scrubbed Monday night has slipped out farther as troubleshooting the problem has dug into the "a ground side issue" that caused the scrub.  Monday night they reset the launch time for Tuesday night; by Tuesday afternoon, they slipped it to Wednesday, and on Wednesday it was just cancelled with no date given.  At this point, there is no defined launch date.  Ground teams on the Cape need to roll the Falcon Heavy rocket back into its hangar for servicing.

“We’re working through a couple of technical glitches with our SpaceX team that just are going to take a little bit more time to work through," said Col. James Horne, deputy director of the Space Force's Assured Access to Space directorate. "We haven’t nailed down a specific launch date yet, but we’re going to have to roll back into the HIF (Horizontal Integration Facility) and work through some things on the rocket.”

Horne, a senior leader on the Space Force team overseeing military launches like this one, said the ground equipment problem that prevented liftoff Monday night could be fixed as soon as Wednesday. But it will take longer to resolve other issues he declined to specify. "We found some things that we need to run some analysis on, so that’s what’s driving the delay," he said.

We don't expect someone working in the environment where everything else is classified to be very forthcoming with facts should some of them be something they shouldn't say and SpaceX was similarly reluctant about talking about what's going on.

In a post on the social media platform X, SpaceX said the company was standing down from the launch this week to "perform additional system checkouts."

There's a chance the Falcon Heavy might be back on the launch pad by the end of December or early next year. A SpaceX recovery vessel that was on station for the Falcon Heavy launch in the Atlantic Ocean is returning to shore, suggesting the launch won't happen anytime soon.

"We’ve got to look at the schedule and balance that with all the other challenges," Horne said. "But I hope we can get it off before the end of the year."

As always, there's a long string of missions queued up waiting for this one to fly, not just for SpaceX but add that Vulcan Centaur Cert-1 mission, now claiming NET January 8, into the mix as well.  All launches rely on the US Space Force infrastructure including the Eastern Test Range.  SpaceX plans to launch the IM-1 lunar lander in the tight January 12–16 launch window.  ULA will launch Astrobotics' Peregrine lunar lander, SpaceX will launch the Axiom Space AX-3 private, manned mission to the ISS.  IM-1 needs Pad39A for some infrastructure SLC-40 doesn't have, which means the USSF delay could delay the IM-1 launch, and AX-3 could conceivably be the first manned launch from SLC-40 that just had the crew access arm added to it.   

October 2023's launch of the Psyche probe atop a Falcon Heavy from Pad39A.  Image credit: SpaceX