SpaceX cleared to launch Falcon 9 rocket after rare failure | CNN

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the world’s most prolific launcher, is ready to return to flight after suffering a mission-ending failure during a routine trip earlier this month.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which licenses commercial rocket launches and assesses accidents, said Thursday it had determined there were “no public safety concerns” involved when the Falcon 9 failed in orbit on July 11, clearing the way for the rocket to return to flight soon.

“This public safety decision means that the Falcon 9 vehicle can resume flight operations while the overall investigation remains open, provided all other licensing requirements are met,” the FAA said.

On its website, SpaceX has already revealed that it will put the Falcon 9 back to work as early as Saturday, launching a batch of Starlink internet satellites.

That would make SpaceX’s return to flight extremely quick, with just two weeks of downtime. For comparison, the Falcon 9 has been grounded for months after previous failures or incidents, the last of which occurred in 2016.

The authorization to resume Falcon 9 launches also means SpaceX is back on track to resume its routine but crucial work of sending astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX’s 10th flight, on behalf of NASA, is scheduled to take place in August. The mission is called Crew-9, and NASA said Friday it is on track for a launch “no earlier than” Aug. 18.

“We have followed the FAA’s investigation step by step,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said Friday. “SpaceX has been very transparent.”

Stich added that Crew-9 will launch after the completion of the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. That vehicle has been at the ISS weeks longer than expected as ground teams work to understand several issues that disrupted the first stage of its flight.

Four astronauts will be flown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket for the Crew-9 mission: Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, Stephanie Wilson and NASA cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov. from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

At a press conference Friday, Hague said he had “extreme confidence in the team (SpaceX and NASA).”

“And I look forward to getting on the rocket when the team decides it’s time to go,” Hague said, adding that SpaceX had been transparent with the astronauts about the issue from the moment it occurred.

SpaceX also plans to launch a historic private astronaut mission, called Polaris Dawn, which will send billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman and three crewmates into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 to perform the first spacewalk by private citizens. That mission was originally scheduled to launch as early as this month but is now scheduled for “late summer,” or August, Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, said Friday.

The Falcon 9, the smallest vehicle in SpaceX’s rocket fleet, is the backbone of the American rocket industry. As of 2024, it has already completed more than 60 missions. No other rocket is as active.

A Falcon 9 had launched a group of Starlink satellites from California on July 11, shortly before the accident.

The first stage of the mission appeared to go smoothly, with the Falcon 9 using its first stage booster (the lowest part of the rocket with nine engines that provide the initial energy boost at liftoff) to propel itself into space.

But the rocket’s second stage, designed to launch after the first stage falls off and propel the satellites to their final destination in orbit, failed abruptly.

SpaceX later revealed that there was an oxygen leak on that second stage. (Liquid oxygen, or LOX, is an oxidizer or propellant commonly used for rockets.) That led to what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described at one point as a “RUD” — or “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” a phrase SpaceX typically uses to refer to an explosion.

Despite the incident, the satellites were deployed safely, Walker said. The rocket detected an engine problem, she said, and deployed the satellites. But they were placed in a much lower orbit than expected, meaning they would likely be pulled out of space by Earth’s gravity very quickly.

The FAA, which regularly oversees investigations after such incidents, told CNN in an email that it found that “all debris from the anomaly has re-entered and there are still no reports of public injuries or damage to public property.”

SpaceX had asked the FAA on July 15 to assess the threat to public safety, allowing the company to resume flights even though the broader investigation — which aims to determine the “root cause” of the accident and identify how to correct the problem — is not complete.

In a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, SpaceX said it already understands this root cause.

Walker also said Friday that SpaceX determined the leak was caused by a crack in a line that connected to a pressure sensor, which had suffered some wear from engine vibration and a clip that was supposed to hold it in place that had come loose. The oxygen leak caused “excessive cooling” of engine parts, which deprived the rocket of enough fuel to burn properly, Walker said.

Walker said the problem would not have occurred on a SpaceX mission carrying NASA astronauts because those missions have a different flight profile.

But SpaceX doesn’t intend to “assume the problem is isolated,” Walker added, noting that’s why SpaceX audited the entire system anyway.

The company cited the rocket’s long flight history as one reason it is “capable of collecting unprecedented levels of flight data and is ready to resume flights quickly.”