SpaceX was unable to launch its busiest rocket due to a rare incident during a routine flight late Thursday night. The flight was scheduled to launch 20 new Starlink satellites into space to provide internet access to some of the most remote places in the world.
One of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets malfunctioned on July 11 after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Space Exploration Technologies Corporationbillionaire founder of Muskbut the broadcast apparently ended before the incident.
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Although Musk initially said the rocket’s upper stage engine had experienced “RUD” – slang for vehicle disintegration or failure. In a statement, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation The rocket survived, but the Starlink satellite it carried was not properly put into orbit.
According to reports, the failed mission means the satellite will inevitably burn up or crash back to Earth Statement posted on the company’s website on Friday. SpaceX has not said when or where they expect to return.
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A screenshot from a SpaceX Falcon 9 flight showing the rocket’s upper stage before it failed on July 11, 2024.
Image source: SpaceX / X screenshot
As of Sunday, about three days after the failed Falcon 9 launch, the satellite’s status remained unclear, despite Mashable’s inquiries to SpaceX, the U.S. Space Force and the Federal Aviation Administration. An FAA spokesman said in an email that someone would respond to the request Monday.
SpaceX’s orbital data comes from onboard measurements, which stopped on July 12, said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard and the Smithsonian Center who is also known for tracking astronauts in Earth’s orbit. known for its utensils and fragments. The company insisted in a statement on Friday that the satellites “posed no threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety.”
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“I believe all objects have likely re-entered by now, but we don’t know for sure yet,” McDowell said in an email Sunday.
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The X post above contains footage of the troubled Falcon 9 rocket leading up to the accident.
The Falcon 9 is known as SpaceX’s “workhorse” for its most frequent launches and has maintained a perfect record for many years. It has launched more than 350 times, placing thousands of Starlink satellites and commercial payloads into low Earth orbit.
This is what the Rockets need too NASA Astronauts travel to the International Space Station. The vehicle’s last major failure was an explosion on the launch pad in 2016 – four years before launch flying humans.
So far, the company has said it believes the problem was a liquid oxygen leak that prevented the upper stage from performing necessary engine combustion. Flight controllers attempt to send commands to the satellite to adjust its position, but this may not be enough to prevent the hardware from falling back to Earth.
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The FAA asked SpaceX to conduct a self-investigation to determine what went wrong and how to fix it. Federal officials will then decide when the company can resume Falcon 9 launches.
It’s unclear how the investigation will disrupt SpaceX’s overall launch schedule, including that of crewed flights.
“We expect there will be more Falcon flights this year than [NASA’s Space] It took space shuttles 30 years to do this, most of them unmanned. The problem may only occur once in 1,000 flights. This is not possible for aircraft with low flight speeds.
