SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, the company’s most widely used, are grounded until further notice following a rare incident, US authorities announced on Wednesday, August 28, while two crews are due to board the vehicle shortly.
This setback risks delaying the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission, which aims to carry out the first private spacewalk in history. The launch has been postponed twice in recent days due to a technical problem and then weather. A new date is now pending.
An investigation requested by the US regulator
Before dawn Wednesday, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Starlink satellites — a service that provides a satellite-based internet connection — lifted off safely from Florida.
After releasing its payload, the first stage of the rocket descended as usual to land on a barge at sea. This process, SpaceX’s great innovation, allows the company to reuse this part of the vehicle and thus reduce costs.
But a video of the maneuver showed that the first stage caught fire when it landed on the barge and then tilted to one side. It “flipped over,” billionaire Elon Musk’s company confirmed at the time, adding that it was the machine’s 23rd flight.
The US aviation regulator (FAA) then announced that it was calling for “an investigation” into the incident. “The resumption of flight of the Falcon 9 rocket is conditional on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety,” the agency said.
According to the specialized press, the last time that a first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket failed to land was more than three years ago, and since then the company has managed to do so more than 260 times in a row.
In July, the rocket had already been grounded for about two weeks following a separate incident: a leak in the rocket’s second stage. The FAA then also conducted an investigation before allowing flights to resume.
Source: BFM TV
