The U.S. Air Force that certified Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. for military missions said there is no reason to change that certification and that it remains confident in the company’s capabilities despite the disappearance of a classified satellite launched by SpaceX. After a “preliminary review” of information that was available to them, Lieutenant General John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center told Bloomberg News that his “team did not identify any information that would change SpaceX’s Falcon 9 certification status.” This bolsters SpaceX’s position that its Falcon 9 rocket apparently “did everything correctly” in the mission code-named Zuma. However, this may increase scrutiny of Northrop Grumman Corp., which oversaw the mission and built the satellite as well as the coupling to release it from the second-stage rocket.
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