SpaceX's Falcon 9 has been grounded following a rare mishap during the landing of a veteran booster.

The Falcon 9 first stage, which had performed a record-breaking 23 flights, made what appeared to be a hard landing on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, toppled over, and exploded. The incident marked the end of a streak of successful landings for the Falcon 9 first stage stretching back to 2021.

The mission, which sent 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct-to-Cell capabilities, into low-Earth orbit, was otherwise successful. Although SpaceX has appeared to make the landing of the Falcon 9 first stage almost routine, the incident confirms that the technical tour de force is anything but.

While the mishap occurred during the landing phase, SpaceX opted to stand down from the second Starlink mission of the night to allow teams time to review the data. Due to weather concerns, it had already scrubbed a planned launch for the Polaris Dawn mission.

Unsurprisingly, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is keen to take a closer look. While there were no reported injuries or damage to public property, the agency "is requiring an investigation."

Jon Edwards, SpaceX VP of Launch Vehicles, said: "We are working as hard as we can to thoroughly understand root cause and get corrective actions in place ASAP. One thing we do know, though, is this was purely a recovery issue and posed no threat to primary mission or public safety."

The clock is ticking. Starlink missions aside, SpaceX needs to get the Polaris Dawn mission launched as soon as possible since it is sitting on a pad required by a Falcon Heavy for NASA's Europa Clipper mission. The target launch date for the Europa Clipper is October 10, and the short launch window, coupled with the weeks required to turn the pad around for a Falcon Heavy launch, means the Polaris Dawn mission has limited time to launch.

There is another pad, Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, but that will be used for NASA's Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which is due to launch no earlier than September 24.

The incident comes soon after an upper-stage malfunction left a batch of Starlink satellites in a lower-than-planned orbit. In that instance, the FAA agreed to allow the company to return to flight operations while the investigation remained open.

Despite the latest booster landing mishap at sea, the FAA will need to ensure that any related processes or procedures do not affect public safety before allowing a return to flight. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/30/spacex_falcon_9_failure/