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Question: Did Zuma complete at least one orbit?

CLOSE VOTERS, PLEASE NOTE: answers to What was the outcome of the launch of ZUMA by SpaceX, to the best of the public's knowledge? do not answer my question because

  1. they were written 2.5 years ago, only days after the launch itself and so can not capture any potential observations in the following years, and
  2. because they do not address my question about "at least one orbit" by Jonathan McDowell.

Zuma bumped NASA for the first launch of 2018 but the mission's status remains murky. Wikipedia says:

The US government has not publicly stated if there was a failure of Zuma and this secrecy has generated speculations on its purpose and its fate.

and Jonathan McDowell aka @planet4589 tweeted

Space-Track has cataloged the Zuma payload as USA 280, international designation 2018-001A. Catalog number 43098.

No orbit details given. No reentry date given, but for a secret payload it might not be. Implication is Space-Track thinks it completed at least one orbit

Yes it's a secret mission but answers to What kind of payload is Mission 1390 (Zuma) going to launch? tell us something and answers to How are military satellites with (apparently) classified TLEs still showing up on sat map websites? explain that secret missions are still tracked by amateurs. In fact active searches for radio signals from Zuma lead to the discovery of another lost satellite.

Are there any updates on Zuma's fate or possible subsequent sightings or detections of radio signals from it? Were one or more TLEs issued? If so, what do they imply?

uhoh
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  • related in meta: Should questions with little information due to classified nature be asked? – uhoh Jun 05 '20 at 01:17
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    @BowlOfRed no it does not because a) both answers there are 2.5 years old, written only days after the launch itself and so can not capture any potential observations in the following 2.5 years, and b) because they do not address my question about "at least one orbit" by Jonathan McDowell. I will include is information at the beginning of my question as well. – uhoh Jun 05 '20 at 07:13
  • @BowlOfRed oops, at the end of it. – uhoh Jun 05 '20 at 12:56
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    Any answer to this question is an answer to that question, and would be best answered by by updating the "Thus far, it has not been seen " part of the accepted answer. –  Sep 12 '20 at 12:55
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    @JCRM from that answer I can't tell if the answer to "Did it complete at least one orbit?" is yes or no, but that's probably because there is so much there that addresses broader issues. Did it? I just need a boolean. – uhoh Sep 12 '20 at 15:05
  • the answers to that question don't answer this question yet –  Sep 12 '20 at 17:46
  • @JCRM Is "Did it complete at least one orbit?" even part of that question? (I've narrowed the scope of the title to this point) – uhoh Sep 12 '20 at 22:58
  • how many orbits it did or didn't complete is indeed part of "the outcome of the launch of Zuma" –  Sep 13 '20 at 07:56
  • @JCRM It wouldn't necessarily be part of any answer that appears there, especially since it's not part of the question to begin with, and a bit of information that could allow someone to answer my question could easily be insufficient to answer that question, and so never make it into an answer there. It could however answer my question, unless close-voters succeed in answer-prevention here. – uhoh Sep 13 '20 at 08:19

1 Answers1

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From this answer and it's sources, we can conclude yes, Zuma completed at least one orbit.

While the outcome for the payload is publically unknown, it either separated or it didn't. If it separated before the deorbit burn it would have remained in orbit for several orbits. If it didn't separate before the deorbit burn it would deorbit with the upper stage, after one and a half orbits.

Given there have been no amateur sightings in over two years since then despite the interest, it seems most likely it didn't acheive a separate orbit, and likely landed in the Indian Ocean hafter one and a half orbits