I've devoted two posts to this already, so this will be short. The post with the most info on the launch was the second one, and posted on Sunday evening. To mercilessly copy myself,
The mission, dubbed Tranche 1 Transport Layer A (T1TL-A), is the fourth mission sending production satellites into orbit for the SDA. This is one piece of a broad constellation — called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) — designed to support the U.S. military and its allies through space-based capabilities, like missile tracking and secure communications.
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The T1TL-A mission is one of 23 missions awarded to SpaceX as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract awarded in August 2020, which is managed by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC). The previous missions from the SDA have already been launched:T1TL-B – Sept. 10, 2025 T1TL-C – Oct. 15, 2025 T1TL-E – July 16, 2026
I see on NextSpaceflight.com that it's currently set for 3:54 AM EDT, on Thursday, Oct. 8th. While SpaceX has a web page for the flight, they don't say anything about why it didn't launch Monday morning, in particular, whether it was just a weather issue or a problem with the hardware; whether Falcon 9 or the payload.
Weather has been very nice in California, and as the booster is returning to VSFB LZ-4 the storms down Baja way are probably not an issue. Or *weren't*, a hurricane is heading towards SoCal and the outer clouds should start arriving Saturday(ish).
ReplyDeleteSo a stubborn mechanical issue, or maybe a programmatic problem back at the HQ (less than year old) unit in Cape Canaveral?
I see by Next Spaceflight (.com) that the launch was moved to Saturday morning at 3:29AM (they do all times in EDT). Not having heard any explanation of what's going on, I need to find out more about it, I just don't really know where to get better info.
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