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SpaceX has suffered a rare failure after a Falcon 9 upper stage malfunction left a batch of Starlink satellites in a lower-than-planned orbit.
The mission was to launch 20 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities. The launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1935 Pacific time on July 11 (0235 UTC July 12) seemed to go well, with the first stage of the Falcon 9 making a successful landing on a drone ship.
However, something appeared to be amiss with the upper stage. Onlookers including this reporter saw an unusual build-up of what appeared to be ice around the Merlin engine during the first burn of the stage. A scheduled restart of the engine to raise the perigee before the deployment of the Starlink satellites “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” according to SpaceX boss Elon Musk. “RUD” stands for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
Neither SpaceX nor Musk have commented on the ice seen around the engine.
SpaceX later confirmed that the second burn was not completed as planned, and the Starlink satellites were deployed into a lower-than-intended orbit. This lower orbit means the satellites will soon make a destructive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Musk posted on social media that attempts were being made to have the satellites run their ion thrusters “at the equivalent of warp 9” in an effort to raise their orbits faster than the atmosphere pulls them down.
He wrote: “Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot.”
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This is the first inflight failure of a Falcon 9 launch since 2015’s CRS-7 cargo mission to the ISS, which failed a few minutes into flight. The company also lost a Falcon 9 and the AMOS-6 payload in a pad explosion in 2016. Still, aside from that and the occasional incident on landing, the vehicle has otherwise been extraordinarily reliable.
The implications of the failure are not immediately apparent. SpaceX has several launches scheduled for July, including more Starlink satellites and the Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon mission, which is set to feature the first commercial spacewalk.
NASA also depends on SpaceX to send crew to the ISS from US soil. The next launch is planned for August. ®
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