The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has determined to floor SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket following a failed touchdown throughout a current Starlink mission. After efficiently sending a satellite tv for pc into orbit on Wednesday, the first-stage booster returned to Earth and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean in a fireball shortly after touchdown, ending a streak of 267 consecutive profitable landings.
The FAA has ordered an investigation into the failed touchdown. “This incident was the results of a Falcon 9 booster rocket malfunction whereas touchdown on a drone ship at sea. No public accidents or harm to public property have been reported,” an FAA spokesperson mentioned. In a statement Reuters“The return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is contingent on the FAA figuring out that the techniques, processes and procedures related to the anomaly don’t have an effect on public security.”
Such investigations, on the very least, are typically accomplished pretty shortly, with SpaceX in command of conducting the investigation itself and the FAA evaluating its findings. That is SpaceX’s second grounding this 12 months, after a liquid oxygen leak in a Falcon 9 booster brought on “unscheduled speedy disintegration” throughout one other Starlink satellite tv for pc supply mission in July. The FAA cleared the Falcon 9 to renew flying simply 15 days later.
Groundings of SpaceX’s flagship rocket are uncommon, having final occurred in 2016 earlier than this 12 months’s two accidents. According to SpaceXThe booster that malfunctioned on Wednesday was on its twenty third flight.
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