Following a successful mission to deliver the Dragon capsule and crew into orbit, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded again after the vehicle’s second stage failed to descend in the expected area of the ocean.
“We will resume rollouts once we better understand the root cause,” the company said in a statement posted to X.
The Crew-9 mission carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov launched on Saturday. (Two seats were left empty so that two Boeing Starliner astronauts could return to the capsule in February.) Haig and Gorbunov arrived safely at the International Space Station early Sunday evening.
Although the most critical parts of the mission were carried out without a hitch, problems encountered during the second stage’s orbital burn marked the third time Falcon 9 has experienced an anomaly. Deorbit Burn uses precisely targeted firing of the stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine to ensure that debris from re-entry lands in a specific section of the ocean.
The other two problems appeared in July and August. In the first case, on July 11, a liquid oxygen leak occurred in the insulation surrounding the second stage engine during a routine Starlink launch, resulting in the loss of 20 satellites on board. Then on August 28, the booster got hot and was destroyed on impact while attempting to land on a SpaceX landing drone ship.
These didn’t keep the Falcon 9 grounded for long. After a liquid oxygen leak issue last July, SpaceX resumed rocket flights in just two weeks. SpaceX said it had determined the cause of the leak was a cracked line connected to a pressure sensor and had taken a number of steps to prevent the problem from recurring. August’s abnormal landing did not disrupt the mission at all, as the Federal Aviation Administration allowed the company to continue launches while the investigation was ongoing.
The latest problem could delay some important upcoming missions, such as the European Space Agency’s Hera mission to study asteroids on October 7 and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon of the same name on October 10. Both missions have tight launch windows. End of month. Last night’s scheduled Falcon 9 mission to launch 20 internet satellites for Eutelsat OneWeb was also delayed.
