FAA suspends SpaceX launches
July 15, 2024
It wasn’t the best of weeks for the rocket launch industry. An Ariane 6 suffered a final stage engine failure which ruined its debut test flight. Then, on Friday July 12, (02.25 UTC), SpaceX lost a key second stage on its Falcon 9 which resulted in its cargo of 20 Starlink satellites in orbits that were too low to be effective. China’s commercial rocket firm iSpace suffered a launch failure late July 10 (23.40 UTC) in a fresh setback for the company
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) immediately suspended SpaceX ‘s launch licence pending a detailed review of the background to the Falcon 9’s failure. SpaceX is used to breaking flight records, but this loss broke a spectacular run of successes for the Elon Musk-controlled company. SpaceX had an unbroken record of more than 300 successful launches over the past seven years. The last Falcon 9 failure was in 2016, when a rocket exploded on the ground and destroyed an Amos satellite belonging to Israel’s Spacecom.
Josef Aschbacher, the Director General of the European Space Agency, issued a Tweet on ‘X’ commiserating: “As we all know, launching rockets is tough business. When one succeeds, we all succeed. When one fails, we all feel it. The magnitude of pressure and level of brilliance and expertise that goes into launching our space infrastructure cannot be underestimated. I am confident that Falcon 9 will soar again and quite soon”.
Pieces of the rocket’s second stage engine were visible during the video transmission and breaking off during the broadcast, while frozen liquid oxygen propellant could also be seen.
The attempt to reignite the engine in space “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform X, referring to an industry acronym for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, which usually means explosion.
The FAA said the problem must be identified and fixed before Falcon rockets can fly again. This could mean many weeks, depending on the complexity of the failure and SpaceX’s plan to fix it. SpaceX’s engineers said the second stage’s failure occurred after engineers detected a leak of liquid oxygen. “A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” said the FAA.
The satellites are probably lost. Technicians say that at just 84 miles up (135 kms) the Earth’s gravity is bringing most of them 3 miles (5 kms) closer with every orbit. “At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise th satellites. As such, the satellites will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise,” said SpaceX. One of the 20 satellites was reportedly at just 115 kms.
Musk put out a Tweet on X: “We’re updating satellite software to run the [Starlink] ion thrusters at their equivalent of warp 9,” he stated. “Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot.”
However, the FAA ruling means that there will be an inevitable delay to some customers’ missions by months as SpaceX reshuffles its manifest, as well as its own Starlink launches. SpaceX stated: “With a robust satellite and rocket production capability, and a high launch cadence, we’re positioned to rapidly recover and continue our pace as the world’s most active launch services provider.”
Nevertheless, the record of some 330 successful Falcon 9 launches will stand the test of time, and perhaps for a very long time! The Falcon 9 has proven to be the most reliable rocket in history.
Meanwhile, and wholly unrelated to the problem, SpaceX has formally asked the FAA permission to increase the launch frequency of its Starship flights to 25 per annum from its South Texas Starbase.
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