SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket experienced a rare glitch on Thursday evening (July 11).
The incident occurred during the launch of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg Spaceport in California. The Falcon 9 performed well initially, with its two stages separating on time and the first stage landing on a drone ship about eight minutes after liftoff as planned.
But the rocket’s upper stage, which was carrying 20 Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit, ran into a problem, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.
Restarting the upper stage to lift the perigee resulted in an engine failure for reasons currently unknown. The team is reviewing the data tonight to understand the root cause. The Starlink satellites have been deployed, but the perigee may be too low to lift the orbit. We’ll know more in a few hours.July 12, 2024
“Restarting the upper stage to raise the perigee resulted in an engine failure for reasons currently unknown. The team is reviewing the data tonight to understand the root cause. The Starlink satellites have been deployed, but the perigee may be too low to raise the orbit. We will know more in a few hours.” Musk said via X: About two hours after takeoff.
“RUD” stands for “rapid unscheduled disintegration” — a term SpaceX uses to refer to an explosion or disintegration. (In case you’re wondering, perigee is the point in an object’s orbit when it’s closest to Earth.)
An hour after Musk posted his blog post, SpaceX provided more details via the company’s X account.
“During last night’s Falcon 9 launch for the Starlink program, the second-stage engine failed to complete its second burn. As a result, the Starlink satellites were deployed to a lower orbit than intended. SpaceX has established contact with five of the satellites so far and is attempting to raise their orbit using its ion thrusters.” The company wrote.
in Reply to this post“It probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try,” Musk said.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, powered by a single Merlin engine, looked a bit odd on this flight, for what it’s worth. SpaceX’s webcast of the launch showed a buildup of thin white ice near the engine as it was being fired into space — an unusual sight, and one that could indicate a fuel leak. That’s just speculation, though; neither SpaceX nor Musk have said anything about the ice yet.
The Falcon 9 is the most flown rocket in space today, scheduled to launch 69 times through 2024. It is known for its reliability; the Falcon 9 has only suffered one complete failure in flight in its history, which occurred during the launch of the robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2015.
The Falcon 9 is also designed for human use; it has launched 13 crewed missions to date, nine of which have sent astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. It’s unclear how Thursday’s accident will affect the rocket and its implications at this point; SpaceX will first need to figure out exactly what happened and how to address the issue.
Thursday’s launch launched 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which can beam service directly to cellphones. Most Falcon 9 missions these days serve the giant and ever-growing Starlink constellation, which currently consists of More than 6,100 operational satellites49 of the 69 Falcon 9 launches so far in 2024 have been for Starlink missions.