SpaceX grounds its Falcon rocket after upper stage off-nominal deorbit burn.
SpaceX is suspending launches of its Falcon 9 rocket after a problem with the deorbit burn of the upper stage on a crewed launch Sept. 28, the second upper stage anomaly in less than three months for the rocket.
SpaceX said the Falcon 9 second stage that launched NASA’s Crew 9 mission failed to correctly perform a firing of its Merlin Vacuum engine less than 30 minutes after releasing Dragon Freedom into orbit.
The stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn, As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.
The engine firing is designed to prevent the rocket body from becoming space debris by driving the stage into the atmosphere for a destructive reentry.
SpaceX said in a social media post
“After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.
We will resume launching after we better understand root cause”
The mishap is likely to prompt an investigation from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which oversees the company’s launch licenses. SpaceX is currently in dispute with the FAA over fines related to Falcon 9 activities at Kennedy Space Center .
This is the third grounding of the Falcon 9 fleet in three months. An upper stage problem resulted in the loss of 20 Starlink satellites on July 11. Flights resumed 15 days later after the company determined the cause of a liquid oxygen leak and came up with a quick fix. A shorter suspension of just three days came when a Falcon 9 first stage made a crash landing on the deck of SpaceX’s drone ship after an otherwise successful launch on August 28. The company has not disclosed the cause of that mishap.
SpaceX was scheduled to launch 20 satellites for OneWeb from its West Coast launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base late Sunday night local time but that mission was put on hold, along with a Starlink delivery mission from Cape Canaveral originally planned for Wednesday.
On October 7 a Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral with ESA’s Hera mission to study the Didymos binary asteroid system that was impacted by the DART mission in September 2022.
Then on October 10, a Falcon Heavy, which uses the same second stage as the Falcon 9, is due to launch NASA’s Europa Clipper on a mission to explore one of Jupiter’s most intriguing moon.