The Federal Aviation Administration ended its investigations in the last two SpaceX prototype spacecraft tests, dubbed SN8 and SN9, according to CNN’s Jackie Wattles. News from federal probes threw the launch of SpaceX’s SN10 prototype in legal limbo, but on Sunday CEO Elon Musk seemed confident that the issue was resolved, tweeting that there is a “good chance to fly this week!”
Last month, news came up that SpaceX violated its launch license with its high-altitude SN8 test flight in December, which led to a formal investigation by the FAA. The agency denied the updates proposed by SpaceX for its license and did not approve the launch, but the company went ahead with it anyway, CNET reported. The rocket was successfully launched, but it exploded during an attempted landing. An FAA spokesman now says that the SN8 issue – that is, their investigation into the breach of the license, they were apparently fine with the whole part of the explosion – has now been resolved, according to a tweet from Wattles this week.
As for SN9, which also exploded when trying to land during a high altitude test earlier this month, the agency found that it “failed within the limits of the FAA’s security review”. It should be noted that the FAA’s SN9 investigation was a routine response to a re-entry failure like the one we saw on February 2nd.
“The FAA closed the investigation of the crash with the SpaceX Starship SN9 prototype on February 2 today, paving the way for the SN10 test flight while the FAA is approving license updates,” an agency spokesman told the Wattles on Friday. “The FAA oversaw SpaceX’s investigation of the SN9 accident. The SN9 vehicle failed within the limits of the FAA safety analysis. Their unsuccessful landing and explosion did not endanger the public or property. “
ÇWith these investigations resolved, SpaceX should be free to launch its S10 prototype now, although no one knows when it will be. Whenever it ends up going ahead with the launch, Musk estimated that the S10 has a 60% chance of landing successfully.
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It is not the worst probability I have ever seen. But if these spacecraft are going to “help humanity return to the Moon and travel to Mars and beyond”, as the company claims, they really need to discover this burning thing.