If rocket launches feel common now, Thursday night was a loud reminder of how fast things are changing.<\/p>\n
In less than 13 hours, SpaceX launched three separate orbital missions, capping the marathon off with a roaring midnight liftoff of its massive Falcon Heavy rocket.<\/p>\n
The late-night launch was for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the defense agency that operates America\u2019s fleet of spy satellites. Designated NROL-97, the classified mission marks the first time a Falcon Heavy rocket was tapped for an NRO deployment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three launches, one day<\/p>\n
It was an exceptionally busy day at the launch pads. The madness began Thursday morning when a Falcon 9 lifted four astronauts on the Crew-13 mission<\/a> toward the International Space Station. Hours later, a second Falcon 9 rocket roared into the sky from California, carrying a payload of 130 satellites for the Transporter-18 rideshare mission. <\/p>\n Then came the heavy hitter. At 11:54 p.m. EDT, the triple-booster Falcon Heavy cleared the pad at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center, cutting a bright line of fire through the dark Florida sky.<\/p>\n SpaceX has pulled off only three launches in such a short window once before, matching a 12.5-hour streak set in March 2025. Coupled with a test flight of the massive next-generation Starship rocket<\/a> on Monday, Thursday\u2019s surge meant all three of SpaceX\u2019s active rocket models took flight over just three days.<\/p>\n Little is known about what NROL-97 actually carried into orbit. The NRO keeps its satellite operations under tight secrecy, and SpaceX cut its live stream shortly after launch at the agency\u2019s request. But using a Falcon Heavy hints at the mission\u2019s scale. The rocket combines three modified Falcon 9 cores, yielding massive thrust meant for extraordinarily heavy cargo or deep-space destinations.<\/p>\n The Falcon Heavy generates over five million pounds <\/a>of thrust at liftoff, which is required for either massive satellite buses or direct injection into Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) ~22,200 miles up.<\/p>\n The secret, symbolic mission <\/p>\n Interestingly, the mission\u2019s patch offered a symbolic glimpse into its purpose.<\/p>\n Space.com<\/a> reported that it bears the Latin phrase \u201cOrbem mundi mutandum conservare\u201d\u2014\u201dTo preserve a changing world.\u201d The crest also pays tribute to the 25th anniversary of 9\/11, depicting a lighthouse whose beam aligns with the 9 and 11 markers on a clock face, surrounded by four stars representing the hijacked flights.<\/p>\n Shortly after staging, the rocket\u2019s two outer boosters peeled away and guided themselves back down to Earth. They touched down almost simultaneously at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.<\/p>\n The core booster<\/a> was left to fall into the sea, intentionally expendable to give the secret payload its final, powerful push into the dark.<\/p>\n SpaceX demonstrated the strength of its reusable hardware during this launch surge, highlighted by a Falcon 9 booster completing its 25th flight for the Transporter-18 mission. The side boosters on the NROL-97 Falcon Heavy brought significant flight heritage to the classified national security launch, having previously supported major scientific and weather monitoring missions such as GOES-U and the Roman Space Telescope<\/a>.<\/p>\n The busy week also featured the long-awaited milestone of Starship<\/a> reaching Earth orbit during its 14th test flight on Monday. The 393 feet (120 meter) tall vehicle reached orbital velocity, deployed a batch of Starlink satellites<\/a>, and performed a controlled ocean entry.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If rocket launches feel common now, Thursday night was a loud reminder of how fast things are changing.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[130643,3925,305218,111,139,305219,69,13650,31482,147,392,1503,64907],"class_list":["post-620056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-falcon-heavy","tag-inventions-and-machines","tag-national-reconnaissance-office","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrol-97","tag-nz","tag-rocket","tag-rocket-launch","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-spy-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}