SpaceX is unable to launch its most loaded rockets after a rare mishap during a routine flight late Thursday night. The flight was supposed to put 20 new Starlink satellites into space, which provide internet access to some of the world’s most remote locations.
One of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets suffered a failure after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 11. The start of the flight was broadcast live on X, the social platform owned by SpaceXbillionaire founder Elon Muskbut the broadcast apparently ended before the incident occurred.
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Though Musk initially said the rocket’s upper-stage engine had experienced a “RUD” — slang for a vehicle disintegrating or failing. In a statement, SpaceX said the rocket had survived, but the Starlink satellites it was carrying were not properly launched into orbit.
The failed mission means the satellites will inevitably burn up or crash back to Earth, according to statement posted on the company’s website Friday. SpaceX did not say when or where they were expected to return.
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A screenshot from a SpaceX Falcon 9 flight shows the rocket’s upper stage before it suffered a failure on July 11, 2024.
Credit: SpaceX / X screenshot
As of Sunday, about three days after the Falcon 9 failure, the status of the satellites was still unclear, despite Mashable’s inquiries to SpaceX, the US Space Force and the Federal Aviation Administration. An FAA spokesman said in an email that someone would respond to the request on Monday.
SpaceX’s orbital data, which comes from onboard measurements, stopped sometime on July 12, said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center who is also known for tracking spacecraft and debris in Earth’s orbit. . The company insisted the satellites would not “pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety” in its statement on Friday.
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“I believe all the objects have most likely been reintroduced by now,” McDowell said in an email Sunday, “but we don’t know for sure.”
The tweet may have been deleted
The X post above contains a video of the troubled Falcon 9 rocket before its disaster.
Falcon 9, called SpaceX’s “workhorse” because it launches more often, has had an unblemished record for years. It has blasted off over 350 times, carrying thousands of Starlink satellites and commercial payloads into low Earth orbit.
It’s also the rocket it takes NASA astronauts on the International Space Station. The vehicle’s last major failure was an explosion on the launch pad in 2016 – four years before it was launched flying people.
So far the company has said it believes the problem was a leak of liquid oxygen, rendering the upper stage unable to perform the necessary combustion of the engine. Flight controllers tried to send commands to the satellites to adjust their positions, but it likely wasn’t enough to keep the device from falling back to Earth.
The tweet may have been deleted
The FAA is asking SpaceX to investigate on its own to determine what went wrong and how to fix it. Federal officials will then determine when the company can resume Falcon 9 launches.
It’s not yet known how the investigation will disrupt SpaceX’s overall launch schedule, including flights that carry people.
“We are targeting to do more Falcon flights this year than [NASA’s Space] Shuttle did in 30 years, the vast majority of which are unmanned,” Musk said at X. “A big advantage of this super high flight rate is that we can identify and solve problems that might only happen once in 1000 flights. This is impossible in a low-flying craft.”