SpaceX postponed its next launch of Starlink internet satellites on Wednesday after a Falcon 9 booster missed an attempted landing on an offshore drone during a successful mission Monday night.
The company intended to launch a Falcon 9 rocket at 12:55 pm EST (0555 GMT) on Wednesday from platform 39A with about 60 Starlink satellites, but SpaceX halted launch preparations on Tuesday, when Falcon 9 was due to be launched. launched for the seaside launch complex at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A new release date for the Falcon 9 launch, already delayed since the end of January for technical reasons, was not immediately available.
A different Falcon 9 rocket took off at 10:59 pm EST Monday (0359 GMT Tuesday) from near block 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and successfully placed its 60 Starlink payloads into orbit. But the first stage booster fell into the sea, missing the SpaceX rocket landing pad in the Atlantic Ocean.
Something seemed to go wrong with burning the propellant inlet, which helps to guide the rocket towards the landing site and reduce it to its final descent. A live video broadcast from an onboard camera showed the rocket tracking a cloud of fire after the entrance burn ended, moments before the vehicle’s telemetry data was cut. A camera from the SpaceX drone showed an orange glow in the sky when the rocket crashed into the Atlantic.
The propeller flown on Monday’s mission – designated B1059 – was on its sixth space flight. SpaceX says the latest version of the Falcon 9 booster can make 10 flights with only inspections and minor renovations between missions, and can fly on additional launches after a major overhaul.
SpaceX’s most used Falcon 9 booster flew eight times.
The company’s recovery and reuse of the early stages of Falcon 9 are unmatched in the launch industry. No other commercial launch company has landed and reused boosters for orbital-class missions. At Monday night’s launch, SpaceX has recovered Falcon reinforcement cores 74 times since 2015, including 24 consecutive successful landings since the company last missed a first stage in March 2020.
The loss of a rocket stage was widely expected to generate an investigation at SpaceX, with possible impacts on the company’s short-term launch schedule. An analysis of the failure of the rocket to land may have triggered the delay in launching the Falcon 9 mission, which was waiting to take off from block 39A.
SpaceX has six Falcon 9 boosters left in its inventory. Three of them are scheduled for future NASA and US Space Force missions: the next launch of the SpaceX crew to the International Space Station in April and with a GPS satellite and a NASA asteroid probe in July.
SpaceX is building more Falcon cores, including boosters for the next launch of the three-body Falcon Heavy later this year, but none are about to reach the launch pad.
Although previously experimental rocket landings are a secondary objective in each mission, the successful recovery of Falcon boosters is more critical than ever for SpaceX’s ability to maintain its fast-paced launch cadence, especially for flights added to the network company’s Starlink internet site.
The Monday night launch was SpaceX’s third in less than a month dedicated to the multi-billion dollar Starlink program, and officers planned two more Starlink missions before the end of February: one on February 17 – now delayed indefinitely – and another from block 40 onwards February 25, according to maritime and air alert notices.
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