SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket suffered a rare anomaly Thursday night (July 11).
The incident occurred during the launch of SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Falcon 9 initially performed well; Its two stages separated just in time, and the first stage arrived to land on the drone ship eight minutes after takeoff as scheduled.
But according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, the rocket’s upper stage, which towed the 20 Starlink spacecraft into low-Earth orbit, ran into a problem.
An engine RUD for currently unknown reasons is an upper stage restart to raise perigee. The team is reviewing the data tonight to understand the root cause. Starlink satellites were used, but perigee was probably too low for them to lift into orbit. Will know in a few hours.July 12, 2024
„An upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for currently unknown reasons. The team is reviewing data tonight to understand the root cause. Starlink satellites were deployed, but perigee may have been too low to raise them to orbit. A few hours,” Musk said via X About two hours later.
„RUD” is short for „rapid unplanned extraction”—SpaceX-speak for an explosion or disintegration. (Perigee, in case you’re wondering, is when an object’s orbit is closest to Earth.)
An hour after Musk’s post, SpaceX provided more details via the company’s X account.
„During Starlink’s Falcon 9 launch tonight, the second stage engine did not complete its second burn. As a result, the Starlink satellites were placed in a lower orbit than planned. SpaceX has interacted with 5 satellites so far and is attempting to raise them into orbit using their ion thrusters,” Written by the company.
The upper level of the Falcon 9, powered by a single Merlin engine, was a bit off in this aircraft, for what it’s worth. SpaceX’s launch webcast showed a clump of fluffy white material near the engine as it fired into space — an unusual sight, and could indicate a propellant leak. That’s just speculation, though; Neither SpaceX nor Musk has yet said anything about the white matter.
The Falcon 9 is the most prolific rocket flying today, with 69 launches already under its belt by 2024. It is known for its reliability; Falcon 9 has suffered only one complete flight failure in its storied history, which occurred in June 2015 while launching a robotic Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station (ISS).
Falcon 9 human-rated; It has launched 13 crewed missions to date, nine of which have sent astronauts to the ISS for NASA. It’s unclear how Jupiter’s incident will affect the rocket and its launch at this point; SpaceX must first figure out exactly what happened and how to fix the problem.
Jupiter’s launch sent up 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which can beam directly to cellphones. Most Falcon 9 missions these days serve the giant and ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of More than 6,100 operational satellites; 49 of the 69 Falcon 9 launches so far in 2024 are dedicated to Starlink missions.
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