As I write this, it’s 12:37 a.m. on the morning of the fifth and we don’t know yet whether SpaceX’s CRS-21 is going to launch today (ETA: it isn’t; Sunday the 6th at 11:17 am local (GMT-5), instead) and yet already I’m looking past that, because the launch schedule ’round these parts nowadays is just weird.
As per a tweet from United Launch Alliance yesterday, their oft-scrubbed NROL-44 mission – originally scheduled for June, y’all – is back on the schedule for Thursday, December 10th at 5:50 pm local time (GMT-5), pending range availability:
Which, y’know, might have come as a surprise to SpaceX, who’ve been expecting to launch the SXM 7 satellite for SiriusXM on December 10th at 11:19 a.m…
For those who are unfamiliar with this stuff: an NRO mission – for the National Reconnaissance Office, and therefore a matter of national security – will generally, pretty much always, take priority over a commercial satellite, so the expectation is that SXM 7 will slip by one or more days. Meanwhile, SpaceX has their own NRO mission coming up as well, NROL-108, currently set for NET December 17th:
And so now we wait and see how it’s all going to shake down, but one thing’s for certain: it’s going to be an interesting month here on the Space Coast.