NOAA shuts down SpaceX live broadcast for "National Security" reasons

[ItsMitch]

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/spacex-launches-a-rocket-but-noaa-prevented-some-of-it-from-being-shown

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) this week has put restrictions onto a SpaceX flight on its Iridium-NEXT satellite launch. This kind of thing is extremely rare as SpaceX has never had an issue like this before, especially not this short notice and it raised some eyebrows even in NOAA. SpaceX's Engineer broke the news halfway into the cast by saying"  "[d]ue to some restrictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, SpaceX will be intentionally ending live video coverage of the 2nd stage just prior to engine shutdown." I find this baffling because there seems to be no national security-related issue in launching a rocket which doesn't contain any kind of satellite for the NSA, Government or even NASA. 

Quote

 

On Friday morning, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket into space and later deployed 10 Iridium communications satellites into low-Earth orbit as planned. But unexpectedly for most watching, the company's webcast was precluded from showing the mission in its entirety.

At T+ 9:00 minutes, just two seconds before the rocket's second-stage engine cut off from firing, the video from space ended. The launch commentator, SpaceX engineer Michael Hammersley, explained earlier in the broadcast that "[d]ue to some restrictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, SpaceX will be intentionally ending live video coverage of the 2nd stage just prior to engine shutdown."

 

NOAA did eventually release a statement, but it doesn't seem to make much sense.

Quote

The National and Commercial Space Program Act requires a commercial remote sensing license for companies having the capacity to take an image of Earth while on orbit.

Now that launch companies are putting video cameras on stage 2 rockets that reach an on-orbit status, all such launches will be held to the requirements of the law and its conditions.    

SpaceX applied and received a license from NOAA that included conditions on their capability to live-stream from space. Conditions on Earth imaging to protect national security are common to all licenses for launches with on-orbit capabilities. 

 

 

But the problem I have with this is, when you're so high up in space there's no way you can see any kind of top-secret military bases or any kind of satellites. SpaceX has confirmed that they will have a cam launch on Monday for their next launch. SpaceX has yet to publicly comment on the matter.

[Starelementpoke]

Our fun always gets ruined...

[wojtepanik]

NOAA is planning to nuke every new hurricane, 100% legit info, no scam. TBH maybe some top secret spy satellite is send out in space under cover ?

[ItsMitch]

1 minute ago, wojtepanik said:

NOAA is planning to nuke every new hurricane, 100% legit info, no scam. TBH maybe some top secret spy satellite is send out in space under cover ?

It's unlikely it was a military satellite, SpaceX would of had to disclose it in a filing with the FAA to get permission to launch. 

[wojtepanik]

1 minute ago, SC2Mitch said:

It's unlikely it was a military satellite, SpaceX would of had to disclose it in a filing with the FAA to get permission to launch. 

obviously they are concerned of something, why they wouldn't want people to see same as always satellite deployment ?

[Guest]

Gotta have privacy on deploying mechas to met aliens ofc.

[Soonercoop]

13 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

But the problem I have with this is, when you're so high up in space there's no way you can see any kind of top-secret military bases or any kind of satellites.

Well it makes me think that there's gotta be something they're hiding or some chance of seeing a secret thing, otherwise they wouldn't care. Perhaps the licenses bring in NOAA that sweet sweet cash money?

[ScratchCat]

NOAA are probably defending themselves for the Starman launch referenced in the article. The Starman event did not have permission to use cameras - therefore NOAA may want to show that they are not allowing SpaceX to do this gain, protecting them from a legal attack / copycat events. This may be minor but there could be other companies who do the same and to escape punishment reference how SpaceX was allowed to do it without a licence.

 

1 minute ago, Soonercoop21 said:

Well it makes me think that there's gotta be something they're hiding or some chance of seeing a secret thing, otherwise they wouldn't care. Perhaps the licenses bring in NOAA that sweet sweet cash money?

Quote

These NOAA regulations were enacted to prevent individuals from launching and flying their own personal spy satellites in space.

It they let SpaceX do this without a licence they would be letting them break the law.

[Soonercoop]

6 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

It they let SpaceX do this without a licence they would be letting them break the law.

Yeah ofc, but the reason it's odd is that it doesn't seem like the regulations would need to be so broad so as to apply to SpaceX's launches unless they actually had something to hide that could be seen from orbit or just wanted money from the licenses.

[ItsMitch]

11 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

NOAA are probably defending themselves for the Starman launch referenced in the article

Quote

 

This raises some questions about the real purpose behind NOAA's action, as the regulation specifically exempts "small, hand-held cameras." SpaceX intends to obtain a full license for such camera views, and as of now there is apparently no restriction in place for SpaceX's next launch of a NASA cargo ship from Florida, happening as early as Monday.

 

 

 

They seem very picky about which kind of stuff they restrict and allow. Very strange to me. 

e:

SpaceX applied and received a license from NOAA that included conditions on their capability to live-stream from space. Conditions on Earth imaging to protect national security are common to all licenses for launches with on-orbit capabilities. 

SpaceX did get a license it seems, they just restricted it, I didn't read this fully.

[Taf the Ghost]

51 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

They seem very picky about which kind of stuff they restrict and allow. Very strange to me. 

e:

SpaceX applied and received a license from NOAA that included conditions on their capability to live-stream from space. Conditions on Earth imaging to protect national security are common to all licenses for launches with on-orbit capabilities. 

SpaceX did get a license it seems, they just restricted it, I didn't read this fully.

If it came from NOAA, my first thought would be someone just being obtuse for no reason, but turning off the cameras before separate likely points to hiding images of the satellite itself. I'm not sure what would be on that NOAA satellite that's important to hide, but that's the most direct read.

 

The other read is someone within the NOAA has doesn't like or works with other factions & simply used a technicality to yank SpaceX's chain a bit. Bureaucratic pettiness is a reality to be dealt with. (See the Veterans' Administration health system and all of the problems everyone has had dealing with that.)

[Ryujin2003]

OMG!!!! NOAA KNOWS THE WORLD IS FLAT, AND DOESN'T WANT VIDEO EVIDENCE TO PROVE THAT WE ARE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN LIES!!!!!!!!

 

FLAT EARTH CONSPIRACY FTW!!!!!!

 

 

end trolling...

[Tech_Dreamer]

[johnukguy]

They screwed up again and the thing will probably explode.

[HalGameGuru]

[yian88]

They cut out the stream because it was almost visible the earth is flat, government cant allow that. 

 

/s

[ItsMitch]

3 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

If it came from NOAA, my first thought would be someone just being obtuse for no reason, but turning off the cameras before separate likely points to hiding images of the satellite itself. I'm not sure what would be on that NOAA satellite that's important to hide, but that's the most direct read.

 

The problem is with this theory though is that we all know what IRIDIUM NEXT satellites actually look like, SpaceX has done this in the past year showing footage of them actually putting it into the F9. 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, SC2Mitch said:

The problem is with this theory though is that we all know what IRIDIUM NEXT satellites actually look like, SpaceX has done this in the past year showing footage of them actually putting it into the F9. 

Correct. However, were there any secondary payloads? Per some Wikipedia links, it appears there are normally at least 2 secondary payloads per launch. Thus, it's entirely possible there was a secondary payload someone didn't want visible.

 

I think the most likely answer is just NOAA being obtuse for non-public reasons (maybe someone's Telsa is late?), but if that is off the table, there's a few other possible reads on the situation.

[Dionyz]

They are acting as if space is "Private". They have no right to exclude anyone from filming airspace. It's like telling the Russians "You can't film here" 

 

What's next? Telling passengers "cant film on planes" and delete every blogger footage? 

[ItsMitch]

42 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Per some Wikipedia links, it appears there are normally at least 2 secondary payloads per launch. Thus, it's entirely possible there was a secondary payload someone didn't want visible.

Can you link? I wanna have another sniff around, because according to SpaceX's press kit it seems that there was only 10 satellites. 

[Guest The Viking]

they don't want people to know that the earth is actually donut-shapped.

 

 

k i'm out

[Taf the Ghost]

50 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

Can you link? I wanna have another sniff around, because according to SpaceX's press kit it seems that there was only 10 satellites. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation#cite_note-23

 

Okay, the secondary payload is on the satellites, though that might mean there is a variant version of the Iridium NEXT sat themselves with something "extra" from a classified client. Though I think the most likely situation is just someone in NOAA yanking a chain on SpaceX because they can.

[Beskamir]

I can already see flat earthers all over the globe using this as evidence for why the earth is flat.

[ItsMitch]

10 minutes ago, ElfFriend said:

I can already see flat earthers all over the globe using this as evidence for why the earth is flat.

the flat earth discord was very wild when this happened....... 

[Eaglerino]

Probably had to announce it short notice so people wouldn't have time to sneak their own cameras into it. It'll probably still happen but hey less likely I guess