{"id":916664,"date":"2026-10-01T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T14:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916664\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T14:26:10","slug":"watch-spacexs-powerful-falcon-heavy-rocket-launch-secret-us-spy-mission-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916664\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket launch secret US spy mission tonight"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a classified spy mission for the U.S. government tonight (Oct. 1), and you can watch the action live.<\/p>\n

The Falcon Heavy<\/a> is scheduled to lift off from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center<\/a> in Florida tonight at 11:53 p.m. EDT (0353 GMT), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-97.<\/p>\n

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You can watch it live via SpaceX<\/a>. Coverage will begin about 10 minutes before launch.<\/p>\n

The Falcon Heavy consists of three modified, strapped-together first stages of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9<\/a> rocket. The heavy lifter debuted in February 2018 and has 13 flights under its belt to date, all of them successful.<\/p>\n

NROL-97 will be the first Falcon Heavy mission for the NRO, which operates the United States’ fleet of spy satellites<\/a>. We don’t know much about NROL-97, which isn’t surprising; NRO missions tend to be classified. But the fact that a Falcon Heavy is the rocket of choice (rather than a Falcon 9) suggests that the payload(s) going up tonight are quite heavy, and\/or they’re headed for a relatively distant destination.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The NROL-97 mission patch, for what it’s worth, features the phrase “Orbem mundi mutandum conservare,” which is Latin for “to preserve a changing world” or “to preserve the world by transforming it.” The emblem also memorializes the lives lost during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

“The lighthouse characterizes enduring strength and the ability to provide information to those in need, even in difficult times,” NRO officials wrote in a description of the patch<\/a>. “The endpoints of the light beam align to the locations of 9 and 11 on a clock face in honor of the 25th anniversary of 9\/11. Four prominent stars represent the four aircraft lost on 9\/11, and the moon phase is shown as it appeared on September 11, 2026.”<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

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\"an\n<\/p>\n

The NROL-97 mission patch. (Image credit: NRO)<\/p>\n

Don’t expect the webcast to shed much light on NROL-97. It will likely end shortly after the Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters come back to Earth for a landing, which will occur at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station<\/a> a little less than eight minutes after liftoff.<\/p>\n

These boosters will be making their second and fourth flights, respectively, according to SpaceX’s mission page<\/a>. The Falcon Heavy’s central booster will not be recovered on NROL-97.<\/p>\n

NROL-97 will wrap up a three-launch day for SpaceX, if all goes to plan. The company is also scheduled to launch the Crew-13 astronaut mission<\/a> to the International Space Station today, at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT), and the 130-satellite Transporter-18 rideshare mission at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT). Both of those will fly on Falcon 9s.<\/p>\n

SpaceX also launched the 14th test flight<\/a> of its next-gen Starship<\/a> megarocket on Monday (Sept. 28). So all three of the company’s currently-flying rockets will lift off within a three-day span, if schedules hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a classified spy mission for the U.S. government tonight (Oct. 1),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-916664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}