SpaceX suffered a rare failure in the Falcon 9 upper stage that left its string of Starlink satellites in a lower orbit than planned.
The mission was to launch 20 Starlink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capability. The mission, which lifted off from Vandenberg Space Center in California at 19:35 PST on July 11 (02:35 UTC on July 12), appeared to go smoothly, with the Falcon 9 first stage landing safely on the drone ship.
But something seemed amiss with the upper stage. Onlookers, including reporters, witnessed an unusual buildup of ice around the Merlin engine during the upper stage’s first burn. A scheduled engine restart to raise the perigee before the deployment of the Starlink satellites “caused an RUD in the engine for reasons currently unknown.” according to To Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. “RUD” stands for “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.”
Neither SpaceX nor Musk have commented on the ice spotted around the engines.
SpaceX will come later. Confirmed The second burn did not complete as planned, deploying the Starlink satellites into a lower orbit than planned, which means the satellites will soon undergo a destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
mask Posts Social media reports suggest the satellite’s ion thrusters are being operated at “warp 9 equivalent” to raise the satellite’s orbit faster than the atmosphere can pull it down.
He writes: “Unlike a Star Trek episode, this probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try.”
This is the first in-flight failure of a Falcon 9 launch since 2015, when the CRS-7 cargo mission to the ISS failed just minutes into the flight. The company also lost a Falcon 9 and its AMOS-6 payload in a launch pad explosion in 2016. Still, aside from that and a mishap on landing, the vehicle has otherwise been extremely reliable.
The impact of the failure was not immediately clear. SpaceX announced in July that it would be suspending the launch of its Starlink satellites and other satellites. Polaris Dawn The Crew Dragon mission will feature the first commercial spacewalk.
NASA also relies on SpaceX to send crew members to the ISS from the U.S. The next launch is scheduled for August.®
