SpaceX launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on December 9, 2025, aboard Falcon 9. Liftoff was at 02:16:25pm ET into leaden skies, with the rocket quickly behind the clouds, probably much to the delight of NRO. The launch direction was northeast.
At T+08:17s was NROL-77 was in its initial orbit and roughly eleven seconds later, Booster 1096 returned to land safely at LZ-2 inside Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at T+08:28s.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn first stage “Never Tell Me The Odds” made a happy return to Port Canaveral this morning, marking the first time that Blue Origin returned with a New Glenn booster after a successful flight and landing.
Good things come to those who wait, or so goes the old saying. For Blue Origin and the second flight of New Glenn, the second flight of New Glenn was definitely worth that wait: a flawless liftoff, flight to orbit and a booster safely landed aboard Jacklyn, the company’s landing platform stationed offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. Not a bad day’s work.
New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines ignited at 3:55:01 PM ET Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and the rocket began its slow climb into space.
Blue Origin was planning to launch New Glenn and the ESCAPADE mission today from Cape Canaveral, but space weather—a relatively rare issue where heightened aurora and atmospheric phenomenae — created a second delay that has kept the 322-foot-tall rocket on the launch pad at LC-36A for the time being.
Maps of controlled areas when there is a rocket launch from the Eastern Range are available and easily found if one knows where to look.
I nearly deleted this from my card when I saw it on the camera. The lens was a 16mm/2.8, I hated the barrel distortion and the overall softness of the shot. Then I looked at it on a laptop, and hmmm, that is actually pretty sharp. You can see the first stage for quite a long way if you look full size.
My other shots from this launch are here: Blue Origin, New Glenn, January 16, 2025.
When Falcon 9 is on a night launch with RTLS, a gorgeous post-staging nebula is the result.
It is a shimmering, beautiful event in the sky, maybe 50% bigger than a full moon overhead.
Every March and November, America reenacts one of its strangest magic tricks: we lose an hour, then months later we find it again behind the couch cushions of November, dusty but intact, like the coins that fell out of our pockets back in the 1980s when people still used cash.
Note: this is a sample of my writing that I am saving for posterity.
On a bright and sunny but very breezy morning, SpaceX launched another tranche of Starlink Mini V2 satellites to orbit today from Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral. Launch was at 11:00 AM ET, and sixty-six minutes later at 12:06 PM ET, SpaceX declared the mission was a success when it announced a successful deployment of all 28 satellites included in the payload.
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