SpaceX kicked off the year with a Falcon 9 launch of the classified Zuma payload, a satellite or spacecraft supplied by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. government. The launch on Sunday night, January 7 at 8 p.m. EST, appeared to go off without a hitch to those watching SpaceX's live coverage of the mission. Since it was a national security payload, SpaceX did not broadcast the flight of the second stage after it separated from the first stage or the separation of the payload from the second stage.

The next morning, reports from anonymous government and industry officials suggested that something went wrong with the launch, and the Zuma spacecraft might not have successfully made it to orbit. Ars Technica was the first outlet to report that the spacecraft might have failed to separate from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket causing both to fall back to Earth together, citing an anonymous source familiar with the mission.

Shortly after, articles from the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg also cited an anonymous source as saying the payload failed to separate and crashed into the ocean along with the spent second stage of the rocket. For its part, a Northrop Grumman spokesperson simply said, "This is a classified mission. We cannot comment on classified missions."