U.S. officials ground SpaceX launches after Falcon 9 rocket fails in landing attempt
Too early to know how much impact the failure will have on SpaceX's upcoming crew flights
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded after failing an attempt to land back on Earth during a routine Starlink mission, forcing the company's second grounding this year.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 successfully launched a batch of Starlink internet satellites into orbit early on Wednesday morning from Florida.
The rocket's reusable first-stage booster returned to Earth and attempted to land on a sea-faring barge as usual, but toppled into the ocean after a fiery touchdown, a SpaceX live stream showed.
It's too early to know how much impact this will have on SpaceX's upcoming crew flights. Besides a private spaceflight awaiting liftoff from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX is due to launch a pair of astronauts for NASA late next month.
Two seats will be set aside for the two astronauts who launched in June aboard Boeing's new Starliner capsule, deemed unsafe by NASA for their return.
Groundings of Falcon 9, a rocket that much of the Western world relies on to put satellites and humans in space, are rare. The rocket was last grounded in July for the first time since 2016, following a second-stage failure in space that doomed a batch of Starlink satellites.
SpaceX's Jon Edwards, a vice-president, said the company is working to understand what went wrong.
"Losing a booster is always sad. Each one of them has a unique history and character. Thankfully this doesn't happen often," Edwards posted on X.
SpaceX has built a sizable fleet of reusable Falcon boosters since the rocket's first launch in 2010 that has allowed the company to vastly outpace its rivals in launch frequency. The individual booster that failed on Wednesday was on its 23rd flight, SpaceX wrote on X.
Another Starlink mission was poised for launch shortly after Wednesday's flight, from SpaceX's other launch site in southern California, but the company called that mission off after the landing failure.
The FAA regulates private rockets and launch site safety to the extent they impact the safety of the uninvolved public. The agency on Wednesday required SpaceX to open an investigation that the FAA will oversee.
"A return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety," the FAA said.
1st-ever spacewalk by private company also delayed
The rocket's grounding could stall the launch of SpaceX's high-profile Polaris Dawn mission with four private astronauts even further. The Polaris mission had been expected to launch this week but was delayed by a launchpad hitch, and then again over bad weather.
The highlight of the Crew Dragon capsule's mission was expected to come two days after launch, when the crew was scheduled to embark on the first ever spacewalk by a private company. The launch was to be carried by a Falcon 9 booster.
Only government astronauts have performed spacewalks to date, most recently by occupants of the International Space Station, who regularly don spacesuits to perform maintenance and other checks of their orbital home.
The first U.S. spacewalk was in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, and used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurized, the hatch opened and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether. Polaris Dawn's crew will also be testing SpaceX's new slimline spacesuits during the spacewalk.
Only two of the four — billionaire Jared Isaacman, mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both senior engineers at the company — will leave the spacecraft.
Isaacman, the founder of electronic payment company Shift4, bankrolled the mission. He has declined to say how much he has spent, but it is estimated to be more than $100 million.
With files from The Associated Press