There is silence on the spaceflight front.
In the last two weeks there has been only one orbital launch: that of a Chinese Long March 4B rocket, which flew over the Gaofen-11 05 Earth satellite on July 18.
The pause basically comes from the transient grounding of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which suffered an anomaly on July 11 that caused the loss of its payload, 20 of the company’s Starlink broadband satellites.
The failure is surprising, given the Falcon 9’s impressive track record: It’s one of the most reliable and prolific launchers the world has ever known.
Prior to the July 11 incident, SpaceX had already launched 68 Falcon nine missions in 2024, all of which were a success. This is the rocket’s first failed flight since June 2015, an era that has recorded more than 300 successful orbital liftoffs. (However, a Falcon 9 exploded on the pad in September 2016 preflight testing, resulting in the loss of its payload, the AMOS-6 communications satellite. )
But we shouldn’t be extraordinarily surprised that a Falcon nine had a bad day; It’s likely to take place at some point, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
“It’s a very complicated business and you can’t ever expect to revel in failure,” McDowell told Space. com. “I think it just reminds us, and reminds the SpaceX team, that the value of good fortune is eternal vigilance. And even with that, sometimes we’re going to have problems. “
McDowell also learns a lesson from this anomaly: an old lesson about not putting all your eggs in one basket.
“The Falcon Nine is not invulnerable. And that strengthens NASA’s case for multiple vendors,” he said.
He was referring to the company’s two personal astronaut taxis: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. In 2014, NASA awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to both companies for the full development of those vehicles. Dragon has been ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station since May 2020, and Starliner made its first crewed test flight to the orbital laboratory last month. (Dragon’s rocket is the Falcon 9, and Starliner most recently flies on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V. )
“Remind other potential consumers that it is in their best interest to have multiple suppliers,” McDowell said of the Falcon 9 failure. “Maybe they’ll give SpaceX some competition, even if they’re not the cheapest, just to still be the alternative, if SpaceX has some other downtime. ”
The Falcon Nine’s current downtime probably wouldn’t last much longer; McDowell said he would be surprised if the rocket didn’t return within a week. However, every time the Falcon 9 regains its wings, its controllers can have a little more dynamism in its ride.
“I also wonder how exhausted the release groups are in the face of this sustained surge,” McDowell said. “And because of that, it’s a smart thing for them to breathe. “
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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 clinical 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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