Blog

SpaceX is unable to launch its most loaded rockets after a rare mishap during a routine flight late Thursday night. The flight was supposed to send 20 new Starlink satellites into space, which provide Internet access to some of the world’s most remote locations.

One of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets suffered damage after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 11. The start of the flight was streamed live on X, the social platform owned by SpaceXbillionaire founder Elon Muskbut apparently the show ended before the incident happened.

Although Musk initially said the rocket’s upper engine suffered a “RUD” — slang for a vehicle that breaks down or breaks down. In a statement, SpaceX said the rocket survived, but the Starlink satellites it carried were not delivered into orbit properly.

A failed mission means the satellites will inevitably burn up or crash back to Earth, according to the statement was published on the company’s website in Friday. SpaceX did not say when or where they are expected to return.

As of Sunday, about three days after the Falcon 9 failure, the status of the satellites was still unclear, despite Mashable’s inquiries to SpaceX, the US Space Force and the Federal Aviation Administration. An FAA spokesman said in an email that someone would respond to the request on Monday.

SpaceX’s orbital data, which comes from onboard measurements, stopped sometime on July 12, said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard and the Smithsonian Center who is also well known for tracking spacecraft and debris in Earth orbit. The company insisted the satellites would not “pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety” in a statement Friday.

“I believe all objects have very likely already re-entered,” McDowell said in an email Sunday, “but we don’t know for sure.”

Tweet may have been deleted

The X post above contains a video of the troubled Falcon 9 rocket before its accident.

The Falcon 9, dubbed SpaceX’s “workhorse” because it launches most often, has had an unblemished record for years. It has been launched over 350 times, carrying thousands of Starlink satellites and commercial payloads into low Earth orbit.

This is also the rocket he takes NASA astronauts on the International Space Station. The vehicle’s last major failure was an explosion on the launch pad in 2016 – four years before it launched flying people.

So far, the company has said it believes the problem is a leak of liquid oxygen, making the upper stage unable to perform the necessary combustion in the engine. Flight controllers tried to send commands to the satellites to adjust their positions, but that probably wouldn’t have been enough to keep the hardware from falling back to Earth.

Tweet may have been deleted

The FAA is demanding that SpaceX investigate to determine what went wrong and how to fix it. After that, federal officials will determine when the company can resume Falcon 9 launches.

It’s not yet known how the investigation will disrupt SpaceX’s overall launch schedule, including flights carrying people.

“We are pursuing more Falcon flights this year than [NASA’s Space] The shuttles have been going for 30 years, most of which are unmanned,” Musk told X. “A major advantage of this super high speed flight is that we can identify and solve problems that might only occur once a every 1000 flights. This is impossible on a vehicle at low flight speed.”