2024-07-16 09:56:03
A second-stage booster on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered a rare failure in space during a routine Starlink mission, putting satellites at risk in the first failure of a SpaceX rocket in more than seven years.
Elon Musk, CEO of the private SpaceX company, wrote on his X platform that an attempt to re-ignite the engine in space “resulted in an ‘explosion’ for reasons currently unknown.”
About an hour after the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Thursday evening, an attempt to re-ignite the second-stage engine in space failed, sending the rocket deploying its 20 Starlink satellites into a much lower orbit than planned, indicating a risk of them burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.
The failure of the world’s most efficient rocket ends an impressive string of successful launches that has kept SpaceX dominant in the industry, according to Reuters.
Many countries and space companies rely on SpaceX, which is worth about $200 billion, to send their satellites into space.
The engine failure during the Falcon 9’s 354th mission was the rocket’s first failure since 2016, when a rocket exploded on a launch pad in Florida and destroyed its payload, an Israeli communications satellite.
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2024-07-16 09:56:03