{"id":789808,"date":"2026-10-02T16:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T16:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/789808\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T16:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T16:36:11","slug":"3-for-3-falcon-heavy-rocket-launches-secret-us-spy-mission-to-complete-spacex-tripleheader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/789808\/","title":{"rendered":"3 for 3! Falcon Heavy rocket launches secret US spy mission to complete SpaceX tripleheader"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX launched a reconnaissance mission for the U.S. government on Thursday night (Oct. 1), the third liftoff for the company in less than 13 hours.<\/p>\n

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy<\/a> rocket lifted off from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center<\/a> in Florida on Thursday at 11:54 p.m. EDT (0354 GMT on Oct. 2), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-97.<\/p>\n

The launch rounded out a tripleheader for SpaceX<\/a>, which also sent the Crew-13 astronaut mission<\/a> to the International Space Station on Thursday morning and lofted the 130-satellite Transporter-18 rideshare flight<\/a> that afternoon. Both of those earlier missions flew on Falcon 9 rockets.<\/p>\n

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The Falcon Heavy rises into the Florida night on Oct. 1, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

SpaceX has launched three missions in such a short timeframe just once before \u2014 in March 2025, when the company sent up three Falcon 9 rockets in a 12.5-hour span<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Falcon Heavy consists of three modified, strapped-together first stages of the workhorse Falcon 9<\/a>. The heavy lifter debuted in February 2018 and now has 14 flights under its belt to date, all of them successful (provided NROL-97 goes to plan).<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

NROL-97 is 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 was the rocket of choice suggests that the payload(s) that went up on Thursday night are quite heavy, and\/or are headed for a relatively distant destination. (SpaceX didn’t tell us what orbit the Falcon Heavy targeted.)<\/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

\"Space\"<\/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

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

The launch webcast didn’t shed much light on NROL-97. At the request of the NRO, it ended shortly after the Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters come back to Earth for a landing, which occurred at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station<\/a> a little less than eight minutes after liftoff.<\/p>\n

NROL-97 was the second and fourth flight for those two boosters, respectively, according to SpaceX’s mission page<\/a>. The Falcon Heavy’s central booster was not recovered.<\/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 just lifted off within a three-day span.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 12:10 a.m. ET on Oct. 2 with news of successful launch and booster landings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX launched a reconnaissance mission for the U.S. government on Thursday night (Oct. 1), the third liftoff for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-789808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}