SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday after one broke apart in space and doomed its payload of Starlink satellites, the primary failure in greater than seven years of a rocket relied upon by the worldwide space industry.
Roughly an hour after Falcon 9 lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the rocket’s second stage did not reignite and deployed its 20 Starlink satellites on a shallow orbital path where they may soon reenter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
The try and reignite the engine in space “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform X, referring to an industry acronym for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, which normally means explosion.
The Falcon 9 shall be grounded until SpaceX investigates the reason for the failure, fixes the rocket and receives the agency’s approval, the FAA said in a press release. That process could take several weeks or months, depending on the complexity of the failure and SpaceX’s plan to repair it.
The botched mission of the world’s most lively rocket breaks successful streak of greater than 300 straight missions during which SpaceX has maintained its dominance of the launch industry. Many countries and space corporations depend on privately owned SpaceX, valued at roughly $200 billion, to send their satellites and astronauts into space.
Musk said SpaceX was updating the Starlink satellites’ software to force their on-board thrusters to fireside harder than usual to avoid a fiery atmospheric re-entry.
“Unlike a Star Trek episode, this can probably not work, however it’s price a shot,” he said.
The satellites’ altitude is so shallow that Earth’s gravity is pulling them 3 miles (5 km) closer toward the atmosphere with each orbit, SpaceX later said, confirming they’d inevitably “re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise.”
SpaceX said the second stage’s failure occurred after engineers detected a leak of liquid oxygen, a propellant.
The mishap occurred on Falcon 9’s 354th mission. It was the primary Falcon 9 failure since 2016, when a rocket exploded on a launch pad in Florida and destroyed its customer payload, an Israeli communications satellite.
“We knew this incredible run had to return to an end in some unspecified time in the future,” Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s former vp of propulsion who designed Falcon 9’s engines, replied to Musk on X. .”.. The team will fix the issue and begin the cycle again.”
Impact on SpaceX’s launch business
The failure will likely stymie SpaceX’s intensifying launch pace for the Falcon 9. The rocket’s 96 launches last yr were its most to this point and exceeded the annual launch total in any country. By comparison, China, an increasingly competitive space rival to the US, launched 67 missions to space in 2023 using various rockets.
“It is incredibly rare for Falcon to fail. They’ve a significantly better rate than almost another rocket developed when it comes to the success of their mission,” said Will Whitehorn, chair of the enterprise capital firm Seraphim Space Investment Trust.
Although Thursday night’s Falcon 9 flight was an in-house mission, the rocket’s grounding is more likely to impact the corporate’s upcoming customer missions.
Falcon 9 is the one US rocket able to sending NASA crews to the International Space Station. The space agency was expecting to launch its next astronaut mission in August, with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut capsule launching atop the rocket.
NASA didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. It has been attempting to help fix unrelated problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which is within the midst of a high-stakes test mission to prove it could turn into NASA’s second astronaut ride to orbit alongside Crew Dragon.
SpaceX was poised to launch as early as July 31 its Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon mission sending 4 private astronauts into orbit for a couple of days to conduct the primary business spacewalk using the corporate’s newly designed spacesuits.
Jared Isaacman, head of the Polaris program and a crew member on the mission, said he expects SpaceX to quickly recuperate from the failure.
“As for Polaris Dawn, we’ll fly every time SpaceX is prepared and with complete confidence within the rocket, spaceship and operations,” Isaacman wrote on X.
Musk replied that “we’ll investigate the problem and search for another potential near-misses.”
SpaceX has launched about 7,000 Starlink satellites of assorted designs into space since 2018 for its global broadband web network. Industry analysts have said the satellites on Thursday’s mission could possibly be price no less than $10 million combined.
SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday after one broke apart in space and doomed its payload of Starlink satellites, the primary failure in greater than seven years of a rocket relied upon by the worldwide space industry.
Roughly an hour after Falcon 9 lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the rocket’s second stage did not reignite and deployed its 20 Starlink satellites on a shallow orbital path where they may soon reenter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
The try and reignite the engine in space “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform X, referring to an industry acronym for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, which normally means explosion.
The Falcon 9 shall be grounded until SpaceX investigates the reason for the failure, fixes the rocket and receives the agency’s approval, the FAA said in a press release. That process could take several weeks or months, depending on the complexity of the failure and SpaceX’s plan to repair it.
The botched mission of the world’s most lively rocket breaks successful streak of greater than 300 straight missions during which SpaceX has maintained its dominance of the launch industry. Many countries and space corporations depend on privately owned SpaceX, valued at roughly $200 billion, to send their satellites and astronauts into space.
Musk said SpaceX was updating the Starlink satellites’ software to force their on-board thrusters to fireside harder than usual to avoid a fiery atmospheric re-entry.
“Unlike a Star Trek episode, this can probably not work, however it’s price a shot,” he said.
The satellites’ altitude is so shallow that Earth’s gravity is pulling them 3 miles (5 km) closer toward the atmosphere with each orbit, SpaceX later said, confirming they’d inevitably “re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise.”
SpaceX said the second stage’s failure occurred after engineers detected a leak of liquid oxygen, a propellant.
The mishap occurred on Falcon 9’s 354th mission. It was the primary Falcon 9 failure since 2016, when a rocket exploded on a launch pad in Florida and destroyed its customer payload, an Israeli communications satellite.
“We knew this incredible run had to return to an end in some unspecified time in the future,” Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s former vp of propulsion who designed Falcon 9’s engines, replied to Musk on X. .”.. The team will fix the issue and begin the cycle again.”
Impact on SpaceX’s launch business
The failure will likely stymie SpaceX’s intensifying launch pace for the Falcon 9. The rocket’s 96 launches last yr were its most to this point and exceeded the annual launch total in any country. By comparison, China, an increasingly competitive space rival to the US, launched 67 missions to space in 2023 using various rockets.
“It is incredibly rare for Falcon to fail. They’ve a significantly better rate than almost another rocket developed when it comes to the success of their mission,” said Will Whitehorn, chair of the enterprise capital firm Seraphim Space Investment Trust.
Although Thursday night’s Falcon 9 flight was an in-house mission, the rocket’s grounding is more likely to impact the corporate’s upcoming customer missions.
Falcon 9 is the one US rocket able to sending NASA crews to the International Space Station. The space agency was expecting to launch its next astronaut mission in August, with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut capsule launching atop the rocket.
NASA didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. It has been attempting to help fix unrelated problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which is within the midst of a high-stakes test mission to prove it could turn into NASA’s second astronaut ride to orbit alongside Crew Dragon.
SpaceX was poised to launch as early as July 31 its Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon mission sending 4 private astronauts into orbit for a couple of days to conduct the primary business spacewalk using the corporate’s newly designed spacesuits.
Jared Isaacman, head of the Polaris program and a crew member on the mission, said he expects SpaceX to quickly recuperate from the failure.
“As for Polaris Dawn, we’ll fly every time SpaceX is prepared and with complete confidence within the rocket, spaceship and operations,” Isaacman wrote on X.
Musk replied that “we’ll investigate the problem and search for another potential near-misses.”
SpaceX has launched about 7,000 Starlink satellites of assorted designs into space since 2018 for its global broadband web network. Industry analysts have said the satellites on Thursday’s mission could possibly be price no less than $10 million combined.
