Creator: NASA/Keegan Barber
The FAA halted SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on Friday after one broke apart in space and destroyed its payload of Starlink satellites, the first failure in more than seven years.
A little over an hour after Falcon 9 took out from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, its second stage failed to reignite and released its 20 Starlink satellites into a shallow orbit where they would burn up.
The engine restart “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted early Friday on his social media platform X. RUD stands for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, which normally means explosion.
The FAA stated the Falcon 9 would be suspended until SpaceX investigates the failure, fixes the rocket, and gets FAA approval. That might take weeks or months, depending on the issue’s intricacy and SpaceX’s solution.
The world’s most active rocket’s failed flight interrupted SpaceX’s 300-plus-mission streak of launch industry dominance. Privately held SpaceX, worth $200 billion, launches satellites and astronauts for many nations and space corporations.
Musk claimed SpaceX was modifying Starlink satellite software to fire their thrusters harder to avoid a disastrous atmospheric re-entry.
“Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot,” he remarked.
SpaceX posted on X Friday night that the satellites are safe. The corporation didn’t estimate when they’d reenter the sky as streaks of light.
“Shooting stars,” Musk replied to SpaceX.
SpaceX confirmed earlier in the day that they would “re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise.” Their height is so shallow that Earth’s gravity pulls them 3 miles (5 km) closer to the atmosphere with each orbit.
NASA announced Friday that it monitors all SpaceX Falcon 9 missions.
“SpaceX has been forthcoming with information and is including NASA in the company’s ongoing anomaly investigation to understand the issue and path forward,” a spokeswoman for the U.S.
SpaceX says engineers found a liquid oxygen leak, causing the second stage’s failure.
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