The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered another setback when the second-stage booster failed to land within the designated area at sea after an otherwise successful mission, which safely delivered a Dragon capsule and its human cargo into orbit.
“We will resume launching once we have definitively identified and addressed the root cause of the issue,” the company stated in a press release.
The Crew-9 mission, crewed by NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, successfully lifted off from its launchpad on a crisp Saturday morning. Two seats were intentionally left unoccupied on the spacecraft to accommodate the potential return of the two Boeing Starliner astronauts in February, should they be needed. Hague and Gorbunov successfully landed at the International Space Station early Sunday evening.
Despite successful completion of a critical phase without incident, the issue that arose during the second stage’s deorbit burn marks the third instance in as many months where the Falcon 9 has experienced an anomaly. The deorbit burn precisely targets the launch vehicle’s Merlin Vacuum engine, using its single thrust to steer debris from re-entry towards a specific area within the ocean, ensuring controlled and contained recovery.
The two extreme points emerged in July and August respectively. A sudden liquid oxygen leak developed inside the insulation enveloping the second stage’s engine during a standard Starlink launch, ultimately resulting in the failure to deploy the 20 satellites on board. On August 28, the Falcon 9 booster landed hard on the SpaceX drone ship, succumbing to the intense heat generated by its attempt to touch down safely.
The Falcon 9 fleet has remained grounded since July’s liquid oxygen leak issue, with SpaceX taking only two weeks to resolve the problem. SpaceX identified the root cause of the issue – a damaged strain sensor-related pipe – and implemented multiple measures to prevent future occurrences. The unprecedented August touchdown anomaly failed to disrupt ongoing missions in any way, as the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration granted permission for the corporation to move forward with its launch plans despite an ongoing investigation.
The latest challenge may potentially postpone certain critical upcoming space missions, including the European Space Agency’s Hera mission to survey asteroids on October 7 and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to the Jupiter moon of the same name on October 10. Each mission has a narrow window for launch, closing by the end of the month. A Falcon 9 mission, originally slated to deploy 20 web satellites for Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation on the previous evening, has been further postponed.
