The Falcon 9 rockets are not flying right now

Flares of the Falcon 9 Rocket: An Extragalactic Flight with 20 Starlink Satellites and a Loss of its Upper Stage Engine

The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from California on Thursday night, carrying 20 Starlink satellites. Several minutes into the flight, the upper stage engine malfunctioned. SpaceX on Friday blamed a liquid oxygen leak.

The second stage of Falcon 9 did not perform its first burn as well as the first. A planned relight for the upper stage engine to raise perigee resulted in an abnormality and was unable to complete its second burn.

The company’s statement says it will do a full investigation into the incident in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the company said on its website. The FAA has grounded the plane pending the outcome of the investigation, reports CNBC.

TheFalcon 9 has a lot riding on it. It has been used for 52 percent of all orbital launches this year, according to Gunter Krebs’s Orbital Launches tracker. (Thursday’s launch was the 70th Falcon 9 launch in 2024; in all of 2023, the Falcon 9 was used for 96 launches.)

Are SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and First Private Spacewalks Due to a Space-Based Flare Reentrance? A Comment on the Case of SpaceX

The company said flight controllers were able to make contact with half of the satellites and attempt to put them into a higher altitude. The company stated that the maximum amount of thrust was unlikely to be enough to raise the satellites.

The satellites are going to reenter the atmosphere and burn up. There was no mention of when they might come down. More than 6,000 orbiting Starlinks currently provide internet service to customers in some of the most remote corners of the world.

It was not known if or how the accident might impact SpaceX’s upcoming crew flights. A billionaire’s spaceflight is scheduled for July 31, followed by the first private spacewalk and an astronauts flight to the International Space Station in August.

The tech entrepreneur who will lead the private flight, Jared Isaacman, said Friday that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has “an incredible track record” and as well as an emergency escape system.