I saw this and thought it was a squadron of fighter jets and my partner thought the city was under missile attack (to be clear I thought they were jets from the local bases)
Secret launches are not really possible in the sense that you mean.
There are 'secret' launches for the DoD but those usually get announced just a very short time before launch. So it might be a week or so before SpaceX will be like 'next week we are gone launch NRO-balbal and then not provide footage of the second stage'.
> I wonder if there are secret SpaceX launches? Is such a thing possible?
No, it is not possible. Even you you managed to sneak a launch by the 7 billion people on the planet, Russia, China, and the USA all have satellites with sensors built to detect just such launches.
The reason I asked is because there are lots of places from which one could launch where few/none of those 7 billion could witness it, if one were willing to put in the effort and money. The US military has a history of doing such things (Enewetak, et c).
Obviously such locations are constrained by orbital considerations, but also there is FH which may be able to mitigate some of that if money were little/no object. We already know SpaceX has people with clearances that work with classified payloads semi-regularly.
Stealth satellites are also a thing. I'm not sure that I am fully up to date on the state of the art here, or that being such is even possible outside of national military efforts.
Could you elaborate on these sensors you speak of? I know there are ground-based optical tracking systems in use, but the satellite-based surveillance I have heard of is mostly to detect nuclear explosions, not rocket launches themselves.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 23.2 ms ] threadThey just (yesterday) did a publicized launch, is the claim that this is the second stage from Starlink-22?
Edit: It does appear that that is what the news service is saying that the NWS said SpaceX said.
Edit2: Someone on twitter is saying this is the second stage from the 4 March (Starlink-17) launch: https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1375301028514500615
There are 'secret' launches for the DoD but those usually get announced just a very short time before launch. So it might be a week or so before SpaceX will be like 'next week we are gone launch NRO-balbal and then not provide footage of the second stage'.
However, this was not such a case.
No, it is not possible. Even you you managed to sneak a launch by the 7 billion people on the planet, Russia, China, and the USA all have satellites with sensors built to detect just such launches.
Obviously such locations are constrained by orbital considerations, but also there is FH which may be able to mitigate some of that if money were little/no object. We already know SpaceX has people with clearances that work with classified payloads semi-regularly.
Stealth satellites are also a thing. I'm not sure that I am fully up to date on the state of the art here, or that being such is even possible outside of national military efforts.
Could you elaborate on these sensors you speak of? I know there are ground-based optical tracking systems in use, but the satellite-based surveillance I have heard of is mostly to detect nuclear explosions, not rocket launches themselves.