Amid Zuma satellite controversy, SpaceX gets a vote of confidence from Air Force
News Brief: The classified satellite known as Zuma was said to have disappeared soon after its Jan. 7 launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but the commander of the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center is giving SpaceX a qualified thumbs-up. “Based on the data available, our team did not identify any information that would change SpaceX’s Falcon 9 certification status,” Bloomberg News quoted Lt. Gen. John Thompson as saying in a statement today. Because the circumstances surrounding Zuma’s launch and mission are so murky, it’s hard to tell whether blame will fall instead on Northrop Grumman, which provided the satellite and its payload adapter — or even whether claims that the satellite failed to separate from the Falcon’s second stage were fabricated to cover up a successful space mission. Now that’s a scenario worthy of “The X-Files.”
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