The Falcon nine rocket, SpaceX’s workhorse, suffered a rare anomaly Thursday night (July 11).
The incident occurred during the launch of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Falcon nine behaved well initially; Its two levels separated in time and the first level descended to land on a drone about 8 minutes after liftoff, as planned.
But the rocket stage, which carried 20 Starlink spacecraft into low-Earth orbit, had a problem, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.
Restarting the upper level to raise perigee resulted in a RUD of the engine for reasons that are currently unknown. The team is reviewing the data tonight to identify the root cause. Starlink satellites have been deployed, but perigee may be too low for them to raise their orbits. I’ll know more in a few hours. July 12, 2024
“Restarting the upper level to raise perigee resulted in a RUD of the engine for reasons that are currently unknown. The team is reviewing the data tonight to identify the root cause. Starlink satellites have been deployed, but perigee could be too high for them to raise their orbits. We will know more in the near future. A few hours,” Musk said about two hours after liftoff.
“RUD” is short for “rapid and unplanned disassembly”: in SpaceX’s parlance, an explosion or disintegration. (Perigee, in case you’re wondering, is the point in an object’s orbit when it’s closest to Earth. )
Within an hour of Musk’s post, SpaceX provided more headlines via the company’s X account.
“During the Starlink launch of the Falcon 9 tonight, the second-stage engine did not burn completely. As a result, the Starlink satellites were deployed in a lower orbit than expected. SpaceX has contacted five of the satellites so far. and we are looking for them to raise their orbit with their ion thrusters,” the company wrote.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, which is powered by a single Merlin engine, looked a little out of position on this flight, for what it’s worth. SpaceX’s launch webcast showed a buildup of fluffy white matter near the engine as it fired into space. – a vision that may simply involve a propellant leak. However, those are only speculations; Neither SpaceX nor Musk have said anything yet about the white curtains.
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The Falcon nine is the most prolific flying rocket today, with 6 nine launches already under its belt in 2024. It is known for its reliability; The Falcon Nine has only suffered one total failure in flight in its rich history, which occurred with the launch of a Dragon rover shipping capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2015.
The Falcon Nine is also friendly to humans; to date, it has introduced thirteen manned missions, nine of which have sent astronauts to the ISS for NASA. It is not yet clear how Thursday’s incident with the rocket and its manifesto will play out; SpaceX will first want to figure out exactly what happened and how to fix the problem.
Thursday’s launch sent 20 Starlink satellites, thirteen of which can transmit services to mobile phones. Today, a maximum of nine Falcon missions serve the giant and ever-growing Starlink mega-constellation, which lately includes more than 6,100 operational satellites; 4nine of the 69 Falcon nine launched so far in 2024 have been compromised Starlink missions.
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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Editor at Space. com and joined the team in 2010. It basically covers exoplanets, spaceflight, and military space, but it is known to go into the realm of space art. His book about the search for extraterrestrial life, “Out There,” was published on November 13, 2018. Prior to becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He holds a Ph. D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a B. A. from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in scientific writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his most recent assignment is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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