SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket after the vehicle encountered problems during the launch of the Crew-9 astronauts for NASA.
Crew-9 lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday (Sept. 28), sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Korbunov aboard the Crew Dragon capsule “Freedom.”
Everything seemed to be going well. Falcon 9’s first stage reached its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket’s upper stage placed Freedom in its correct orbit; The capsule is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29).
After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, the Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed of at sea as planned, but with a nominal orbital burn. As a result, the second stage landed safely at sea, but outside the target area. Let’s start again after we started…September 29, 2024
But the upper stage encountered a problem after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday.
“After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was ejected into the ocean as planned, but a nominal detonation burn occurred. As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside the target area. We will launch again after we better understand the root cause,” he said. Written by SpaceX A post on X.
Related: SpaceX Crew-9 Spaceflight: Live Updates
In fact, a Falcon 9 was scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night. Postponed.
The Crew-9 incident is the second Falcon 9 overhead issue in less than three months. On July 11, the rocket suffered a liquid oxygen leak in its upper stage while launching SpaceX’s 20 Starlink Internet satellites. As a result, the spacecraft was underutilized and lost.
SpaceX found the anomaly in a crack line for a pressure sensor in the upper stage liquid-oxygen system. Falcon 9 returned to flight two weeks later, completing a mission on July 27.
The rocket was grounded again after the first stage failed to land successfully on August 28, but otherwise went well. This gap was even briefer: Falcon 9 went on two successful missions three days later, also sticking landings.
Crew-9 sends Hack and Korbuno to the ISS for a stay of about five months. The two will return to Earth in February with NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams, who arrived at the orbiting lab in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
Earlier this month the Starliner came home without them; The capsule experienced thruster problems in orbit, and NASA deemed it too risky to return a crew to Earth with the spacecraft. So the agency changed Crew-9’s manifest, taking two astronauts off the launch to make room for Wilmore and Williams on Freedom for the downward leg.
