SpaceX suffered its first Falcon 9 launch failure since 2015, leaving 20 Starlink satellites in a dangerously low orbit. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said it was unclear whether the spacecraft could be saved using its onboard ion thrusters.
SpaceX’s 70th orbital launch of the year, called Starlink 9-3, initially appeared to go well after it lifted off from Vandenberg Spaceport at 7:35 p.m. PST (10:35 p.m. ET, 0235 GMT) Thursday evening. But as the Falcon 9’s second stage burned, an unusual amount of ice was seen accumulating around the Merlin Vacuum engine in camera footage from the rocket.
About an hour after the satellite was deployed, Musk posted on his social media platform X: “Restarting the upper stage to lift off the perigee resulted in an engine failure. [Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly] For reasons currently unknown. The team is reviewing the data tonight to understand the root cause.
The second stage was scheduled to burn for one second to bring its orbit into a circle 52 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.
Regarding the fate of the rocket’s payload, Musk added: “The Starlink satellites have been deployed, but the perigee may be too low to raise their orbit. We will know more in a few hours.”
The batch of 20 Starlink satellites included 13 with direct cellphone capabilities. SpaceX said it had been able to communicate with five of the satellites and was trying to raise their orbits. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which maintains the spaceflight database, estimated the satellites were probably in an orbit of 295 by 138 km. The intended deployment orbit was 296 by 286 km.
“We’re working on an update to the satellite software to run the ion thrusters at warp speed 9,” Musk said in a social media update. “Unlike an episode of Star Trek, this probably won’t work, but it’s worth a shot. Satellite thrusters need to raise the orbit faster than they’re dragged down by atmospheric drag or burn up.”
The last Falcon 9 failure occurred in flight on June 28, 2015, when a Dragon resupply mission ended after 139 seconds of flight. Another Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral during refueling operations for a pre-flight static test launch on September 1, 2016, destroying an Israeli communications satellite and severely damaging Space Launch Complex 40.
The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which carries tail number B1063 in the SpaceX fleet, was flying for the 19th time. Previous launches have included NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, the Transporter-7 Joint Transport mission and 13 batches of Starlink satellites.
Just over eight minutes after liftoff, B1063 touched down on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship. It was the 96th landing on OCISLY and the 329th to date.
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