A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carries 22 Starlink internet satellites into space after launching from Vandenberg Space Base on March 18, 2024, as seen from Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been delayed, pending an investigation, after an in-flight incident — a rare occurrence for the company’s flagship rocket.
The mission, dubbed “Starlink Group 9-3,” launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Base on Thursday evening and carried 20 satellites headed to low Earth orbit.
The rocket’s lower first stage, or booster, performed as expected before returning to land. But the rocket’s upper second stage failed to restart its engines as planned and was destroyed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed.
“Restarting the upper stage to raise perigee resulted in an RUD engine firing for reasons currently unknown,” Musk wrote in the social media post. RUD, or “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” is the term SpaceX uses to refer to an explosion or abort event.
Federal regulators have confirmed that the Falcon 9 will be grounded until the Federal Aviation Administration approves SpaceX’s investigation into the incident.
“The FAA will be involved in every step of the investigation and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” the agency said in a statement to CNBC.
The Starlink mission is the 69th Falcon 9 launch this year — with the company averaging a launch rate of one every two to three days by 2024 — but the investigation is likely to delay launches scheduled for the coming weeks, including two crewed missions: the private Polaris Dawn and NASA’s Crew-9.
SpaceX is still deploying 20 Starlink satellites, but noted that the second-stage engine failure means the satellites are in a “lower orbit than intended.” As of early Friday morning, the company said it had made contact with five satellites so far and was trying to use the satellites’ onboard thrusters to move them higher into orbit to avoid burning up in the atmosphere.
“We are updating the satellite software to run the ion thrusters at speeds equivalent to warp speed 9,” Musk wrote, adding that “this may not work, but it’s still worth a try.”
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on the Space Force and Missile Defense Agency mission USSF-124 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., February 14, 2024.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
The Falcon 9 has enjoyed an unprecedented run of success for nearly a decade, making more than 300 consecutive successful launches into orbit since its previous failed launch in June 2015, on NASA’s CRS-7 cargo mission.
In total, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has flown 354 missions to orbit — including more than 300 successful landings and more than 280 booster reuses.
