At the beginning of this year 2018, specifically on January 7, SpaceX he had planned to carry out a mission that, unlike many others, had not been the least publicized. As it became known later, apparently it was a secret mission where it was sought to put into orbit a device that some time later we have known that it had been baptized as Zuma.
The news of this launch came when shortly after we learned that, despite the fact that the operation seemed to have been a success, curiously the cargo carrying the SpaceX rocket disappeared. The truth is that everything seems very strange since we are talking about a company that has not made a mistake for several years, on the other hand, as just announced, the United States Air Force will continue to trust it to put its satellites into orbit for what that, if the device had disappeared, it would not have been the fault of the company led by Elon Musk.
Despite all systems indicating otherwise, the Zuma device is not in orbit
After all this mishap, there have been many questions that have been poured and that apparently have remained in the pipeline both for SpaceX, that he has only limited himself to commenting that all his systems worked correctlyAs for the United States government, which, as often happens, has not wanted to go into more detail since, as the gossip says, we would be facing a military satellite that belonged to a secret project of the US government.
Going into a little more detail, thanks to information from SpaceX we know that the launch was originally scheduled for November 2017, a date that was finally postponed until January 7. During launch everything worked correctly, since both the first and second phases of the Falcon9 had worked perfectly. The strangest thing is that the cargo disappeared after being registered by the satellite systems as it had entered orbit.
As commented in a statement Gwynne shotwell, President of SpaceX:
After reviewing all the data we can confirm that the Falcon 9 worked correctly.
As expected, after this information provided by none other than the current president of SpaceX, all eyes turned to the United States Air Force, which, contrary to what everyone was asking for, has limited itself to announcing that they will continue working. with SpaceX for its future government missions. In his own words Lieutenant General John Thompson, current Commander of the Center for Space and Missile Systems:
Based on our data analysis, the team did not identify any information to change the certification of the SpaceX Falcon 9
Everything seems to indicate that the failure occurred with the rocket separation system manufactured by the Northrop Grumman company
Based on the statements that, although they have been made to wait, have finally arrived from the United States Air Force, it is understood that they cannot get rid of SpaceX services because no reason has been found to distrust the company or hold them responsible for the loss of their secret device. Although, as you can see, they also indicate that they will continue to study this case.
With this crossover of statements, where the United States Air Force has finally pardoned, or so it seems, SpaceX remains to hear the version of the manufacturer of the secret device Zuma, the aerospace company Northrop Grumman, which, apparently, in addition to being responsible for the manufacture of the device, they were also responsible for the construction of the rocket separation system.
If we have this in mind, it is not surprising that there have been many voices that indicate that the rocket separation device manufactured by Northrop Grumman has been precisely the one that has failed preventing Zuma from separating from the Falcon 9 so both would have fallen to the ground after reaching orbit.