SpaceX wants the Federal Aviation Administration to let its grounded fleet of Falcon 9 rockets return to flight amid an ongoing public safety investigation that has allowed the company to resume a series of unmanned commercial missions while engineers study what happened during Thursday’s upper stage failure.
But what about Falcon 9 missions with humans on board?
Polaris Dawn, a mission with billionaire commander Jared Isaacman and three other commercial astronauts in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, was scheduled to launch on July 31 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Following the example, NASA Crew-9 was supposed to launch to the International Space Station in August.
More:SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets grounded by FAA, putting Space Coast missions on hold indefinitely
“I would imagine the requirement will be that they understand what happened. They have a plan to fix it. And they will fly at least one uncrewed Falcon 9 to verify the repairs before Polaris Dawn is allowed to go,” he said. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“And that’s not really going to be a problem because they have a lot of Falcon 9s backed up that are going to go,” McDowell said.
Assuming SpaceX adds instrumentation to the rocket upon return to flight to gather additional diagnostics for investigators, McDowell said, “the question is whether it’s weeks or months” before the FAA gives permission to resume manned missions.
On Monday, SpaceX asked the FAA to agree that last week’s anomaly did not endanger public safety and allow the Falcon 9s to return to flight while the investigation remains open. The ill-fated rocket, carrying a payload of 20 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, experienced a liquid oxygen leak in its second, upper stage — unexpectedly forcing the satellites into a too-shallow orbit.
“The FAA is reviewing the request and will be guided by data and safety at every step of the process,” the agency said in a statement about Monday’s SpaceX request. Other details remain unknown.
“It’s going to impact manned launches more than (regular) launches because they’re going to make sure they have everything absolutely figured out and safe before they bring another crew on board,” said Laura Forczyk, Atlanta’s founder and chief executive. the space consultancy Astralytical.
Falcon 9s have launched 46 of the 50 missions in Florida
Meanwhile, the Space Coast launch plan — which accelerated at a record pace this year — remains largely on hold indefinitely. The Falcon 9s participated in 46 of the 50 missions launched during 2024 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the adjacent NASA Kennedy Space Center.
In a statement, SpaceX pledged to “conduct a full investigation in coordination with the FAA, determine the root cause and take corrective action to ensure the success of future missions.” According to the federal agency, “return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the accident will not affect public safety.”
FLORIDA TODAY reached out to NASA, which emailed the following statement:
“Although the SpaceX Starlink launch was a fully commercial mission, NASA receives an overview of all points of interest for the Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX as part of the agency’s standard activities. Crew safety and mission assurance are NASA’s top priorities,” the statement said.
“SpaceX is providing information and engaging NASA in the company’s ongoing investigation of the anomalies to understand the problem and the way forward. NASA will provide an update on the agency’s missions, including potential schedule impacts, if any, as more information becomes available,” the statement said. .
John Holst, a Florida space consultant and author of the blog Ill-Defined Space, said SpaceX has a history of open issues.
“Those are rare for SpaceX. I’m sure SpaceX will try to get through it quickly, but at the same time, the FAA and NASA have their mission assurance process that they’d like to go through and understand exactly what happened,” Holst said. .
“Because they don’t want the second stage to go incorrectly — RUD (rapid unplanned disassembly) — under the astronauts trying to get into orbit,” he said.
What FAA, SpaceX may find during investigation
McDowell said SpaceX operates under the philosophy of “good enough is never good enough.”
“They’re still futzing with the design and tweaking and changing, aren’t they? They’re in Silicon Valley mode, rather than the old NASA mode, ‘Yeah, once it works, don’t change anything.’ ” he said.
“Was this (anomaly) the result of a design change? It’s not going to be a major flaw in the existing design because they’ve had so many launches. So the other possibility is that it was a manufacturing or assembly flaw. And that’s what the investigators have to look at.” he said.
McDowell said SpaceX and the FAA need to ensure that the potential problem does not affect the Polaris Dawn mission. If the same mishap with an upper-stage oxygen leak happened during Polaris Dawn, he said, SpaceX would lose the mission, not the crew — which could maneuver Dragon to an emergency return to Earth.
He said he would be surprised if it took more than a month for SpaceX engineers to zero in on the root cause and its solution for unmanned Starlink missions — but “then the question is, how long will it take for the FAA to be happy? “
What happened to the Falcon 9 upper stage?
During Thursday’s launch in California, SpaceX announced that the Falcon 9 first stage performed nominally, lifting the second stage and Starlink satellites into orbit before returning to Earth for a successful landing of the drone ship.
“The second stage will launch into very low Earth orbit, then coast for about 40 minutes to reach the highest point of that orbit, and then restart (its engine) to get into the orbit where all the Starlink satellites are going to be deployed. And what happened this time was there was no restart,” McDowell said.
SpaceX reported that the satellites were left in an eccentric orbit only 135 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, less than half of the expected perigee height.
“The density of the atmosphere is quite high, and the drag that the satellites experience as they crash through the upper atmosphere will knock them down very quickly. What’s worse, the small argon electric rocket engines on the satellites are not powerful enough to overcome them.” that move,” McDowell said.
“So even though SpaceX tried to fire those rocket engines to save the satellites and get them into a higher orbit, they just didn’t have the power to overcome the drag at such a low altitude,” he said.
“And so within, I’d probably guess a few hours to a day, all those suction cups were down — they burned up in the atmosphere,” he said.
Airlines waiting to return to flight
In addition to satellites, the Falcon 9 launched a diverse array of missions into orbit from the Space Coast this year, including:
A day after Crew-8 launched in March, Cape Canaveral-based Sidus Space achieved critical enterprise scale by launching its first LizzieSat-1 satellite aboard a Falcon 9 on SpaceX’s shared Transporter-10 mission from Vandenberg.
“I’m shocked. They were pretty successful,” Mark Lee, Sidus Space’s chief quality inspector, said of Thursday’s mishap. He said his company plans another launch later this year and hopes the FAA grounding won’t have a big impact on that timing.
Now commonplace on the Space Coast, Starlink launches don’t generate the same interest — or crowds of spectators — as high-profile rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.
“We do not anticipate any immediate impact as summer vacationers have mostly made their plans,” Space Coast Office of Tourism Executive Director Peter Cranis said in an email about the FAA grounding.
“There’s always a bit of a slowdown from September into the fall, so we don’t expect it to be any different this year,” Cranis said.
Brooke Edwards is a space reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or X: @brookeofstars.