SpaceX wasn’t grounded for long.
The company launched 23 of its Starlink broadband satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, on Saturday, July 27 at 1:45 a. m. EDT (05:45 GMT).
It’s SpaceX’s first liftoff since July 11, when a Falcon 9 suffered an upper-level failure that resulted in the loss of 20 Starlink spacecraft.
The Falcon 9’s first tier returned to Earth on Saturday about 8 minutes after launch, as planned. He made a vertical landing on SpaceX’s Just Read the Instructions drone, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is the 17th launch and landing of this specific booster, according to a SpaceX project description. Thirteen of its flights were Starlink projects.
Meanwhile, the upper level of the rocket continued to carry the 23 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). Deployed them as planned, about 63 minutes after launch, SpaceX displayed X.
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The July 11 failure was due to a liquid oxygen leak, which prevented the Falcon Nine’s upper tier from performing orbital combustion as planned. SpaceX’s anomaly investigation revealed the most likely cause of this leak: a crack in the pipe of a strain sensor in the liquid oxygen system.
SpaceX made a correction on Saturday’s flight.
“For near-term Falcon launches, the failed momentum level engine sensing line and sensor will be removed,” SpaceX wrote in an anomaly update Thursday afternoon (July 25). “The sensor is not used through the flight protection formula and could be covered by alternative sensors that are already installed on the engine. “
SpaceX said it submitted its report on the twist of fate to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees those investigations. This investigation remains open, but the FAA has nevertheless given the green light for its publication on Saturday.
“After a thorough review, the FAA has decided that there were no public protection considerations in the anomaly that occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group’s 9-3 launch on July 11,” the FAA said in a submission to TechCrunch. “This public protection determination means that the Falcon 9 vehicle can resume flight operations while the general investigation remains open, provided all other licensing requirements are met.
The July 11 twist of fate was the first flight failure of a Falcon nine since June 2015, ending a streak of more than three hundred consecutive successful takeoffs. (However, a Falcon 9 exploded in the platform’s pre-flight tests in September 2016. )
Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 2:10 a. m. m. ET on July 27 with news about the successful launch and landing of a rocket, and then returned at 2:52 a. m. m. ET with news about the deployment of the satellite.
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Michael Wall is a senior space editor at Space. com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight, and military space, but is known for dabbling in the field of space art. His book about the search for extraterrestrial life, “Out There,” was published on November 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph. D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in clinical writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest assignment is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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