SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded while an investigation is conducted into an incident that occurred during its flight. This kind of failure is uncommon for Falcon 9, which is usually very reliable. The mission, called “Starlink Group 9-3,” launched on Thursday evening from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It carried 20 satellites intended for low Earth orbit.
The rocket’s lower first stage, also known as the booster, worked perfectly. It safely returned to the ground. However, the upper second stage of the rocket did not restart its engine as it was supposed to. This ended up being destroyed, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Elon Musk posted on social media that during an attempt to restart the rocket’s upper stage to raise its lowest orbit point (perigee), the engine failed and broke apart unexpectedly.
SpaceX calls such an event a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (RUD). This means the engine exploded or was destroyed. In a later update, the company explained that the engine failure happened because of a liquid oxygen leak. This leak occurred in the second stage of the rocket.
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The Falcon 9 rocket will not be allowed to fly again until the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reviews it. The FAA must also approve SpaceX’s investigation into the recent incident. The FAA stated they would be involved in every part of the investigation and approve SpaceX’s final report, including any necessary fixes.
The Starlink mission was the 69th Falcon 9 rocket launch this year. On average, the company has been launching a rocket every two to three days since the beginning of the year. However, due to an ongoing investigation, upcoming launches (including two missions with crew on board called Polaris Dawn (a private mission) and NASA’s Crew-9) will probably be delayed.
SpaceX managed to launch 20 Starlink satellites. However, a problem with the second-stage engine left the satellites in a lower orbit than planned. On Friday afternoon, the company reported that it had contacted 10 of the satellites and tried to use their onboard thrusters to move them to a higher orbit.
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However, SpaceX confirmed that the satellites couldn’t be saved due to the high drag in the lower orbit. As a result, the 20 satellites will fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. The company stated on its website that its satellites are safe. They said it wouldn’t harm other satellites in orbit or pose any danger to the public.
The Falcon 9 rocket has had an impressive track record for almost ten years. Since its last failure during the NASA cargo mission CRS-7 in June 2015, it has achieved over 300 successful launches in a row.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been launched 354 times into space. More than 00 of these missions have landed successfully, allowing SpaceX to reuse the rocket boosters over 280 times.
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