WASHINGTON ; The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on Friday following its first failure in over seven years, which resulted in the loss of a batch of Starlink satellites.
Approximately an hour after its launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the rocket’s second stage failed to reignite, deploying 20 Starlink satellites on a shallow orbital path that will lead to their reentry and destruction in Earth’s atmosphere. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk referred to the incident as an “engine RUD” (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly) on his social media platform, X.
The FAA stated that Falcon 9 will remain grounded until the cause of the failure is identified, corrected, and approved by the agency.
This incident ended a streak of over 300 successful missions for the Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket, relied upon by various countries and space companies. The failure followed a detection of a liquid oxygen leak in the rocket’s second stage.
SpaceX is updating the software of the Starlink satellites to make their thrusters fire harder in an attempt to prevent their reentry. However, Musk acknowledged the low likelihood of success.
NASA is monitoring the situation and is involved in SpaceX’s investigation. The grounding could impact upcoming missions, including NASA’s next astronaut mission and SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission.
SpaceX has launched about 7,000 Starlink satellites since 2018, and Thursday’s payload was valued at around $10 million.
