SpaceX suffered its first in-flight failure of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2015, leaving 20 Starlink satellites in a dangerously low orbit. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said it was unclear whether the spacecraft could be saved using onboard ion thrusters.
SpaceX’s 70th orbital launch of the year, dubbed Starlink 9-3, initially appeared to be going well after lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base Thursday night at 7:35 p.m. PDT (10:35 p.m. EDT, 0235 UTC). But during the Falcon 9 second stage burn, an unusual amount of ice was seen accumulating around the Merlin vacuum engine in camera footage from the rocket.
About an hour after the satellite was deployed, Musk posted on his social media platform X: “Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an unscheduled rapid engine disassembly for reasons currently unknown. The team is reviewing data tonight to understand the root cause.”
The one-second ignition of the second stage to circularize the orbit was scheduled to occur 52 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.
As for the fate of the rocket's payload, Musk added: “Starlink satellites have been deployed, but perigee may be too low for them to be lifted into orbit. We'll know more in a few hours.”
The batch of 20 Starlink satellites included 13 that feature direct cellphone communications capabilities. SpaceX said it had successfully established contact with five of the satellites and was attempting to raise their orbits. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which maintains a database of spaceflights, predicted the satellites were likely in a 295-by-138-km orbit. The intended deployment orbit was 296 by 286 km.
“We’re updating the satellite’s software so that the ion thrusters operate at their equivalent of warp 9,” Musk said in a social media update. “Unlike an episode of Star Trek, this probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try. The satellite’s thrusters must rise into orbit faster than atmospheric drag pushes them down or they burn up.”
The last mid-flight failure of a Falcon 9 rocket occurred on June 28, 2015, when a Dragon cargo resupply mission ended 139 seconds into the flight. Another Falcon 9 exploded on the Cape Canaveral launch pad during fueling operations for a pre-flight static test on Sept. 1, 2016, destroying an Israeli communications satellite and causing severe damage to Space Launch Complex 40.
The first Falcon 9 rocket for the Starlink 9-3 mission, tail number B1063 in SpaceX’s fleet, was flying for the 19th time. Its previous launches included NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, the Transporter-7 rideshare mission, and 13 batches of Starlink satellites.
Just over eight minutes after liftoff, B1063 landed on SpaceX's unmanned spacecraft, Of Course I Still Love You. This was the 96th landing on OCISLY and the 329th rocket landing to date.
