SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a classified spy mission for the U.S. government tonight (Oct. 1), and you can watch the action live.
The Falcon Heavy is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tonight at 11:53 p.m. EDT (0353 GMT), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-97.
You can watch it live via SpaceX. Coverage will begin about 10 minutes before launch.
The Falcon Heavy consists of three modified, strapped-together first stages of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The heavy lifter debuted in February 2018 and has 13 flights under its belt to date, all of them successful.
NROL-97 will be the first Falcon Heavy mission for the NRO, which operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites. 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 is the rocket of choice (rather than a Falcon 9) suggests that the payload(s) going up tonight are quite heavy, and/or they're headed for a relatively distant destination.
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.
"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. "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."
Don't expect the webcast to shed much light on NROL-97. It will likely end shortly after the Falcon Heavy's two side boosters come back to Earth for a landing, which will occur at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a little less than eight minutes after liftoff.
These boosters will be making their second and fourth flights, respectively, according to SpaceX's mission page. The Falcon Heavy's central booster will not be recovered on NROL-97.
NROL-97 will wrap up a three-launch day for SpaceX, if all goes to plan. The company is also scheduled to launch the Crew-13 astronaut mission to the International Space Station today, at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT), and the 130-satellite Transporter-18 rideshare mission at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT). Both of those will fly on Falcon 9s.
SpaceX also launched the 14th test flight of its next-gen Starship megarocket on Monday (Sept. 28). So all three of the company's currently-flying rockets will lift off within a three-day span, if schedules hold.
