SpaceX is flying again after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled that the company can resume Falcon 9 rocket launches.
SpaceX is flying again after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled that the company can resume Falcon 9 rocket launches while the investigation into afor a pressure sensor attached to the upper stage’s liquid-oxygen system. That resulted in an oxygen leak that degraded the performance of the upper-stage engine. As a near-term fix, SpaceX is removing the sense line and the sensors for upcoming Falcon 9 launches.from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:45 a.m. ET today.
FAA investigations of launch anomalies typically take months to wrap up, but in this case, the agency said it “determined no public safety issues were involved in the anomaly” on July 11. “The public safety determination means the Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation remains open, provided all other license requirements are met,” the FAA said.
The company said the upper stage’s liquid-oxygen sense line cracked “due to fatigue caused by high loading from engine vibration and looseness in the clamp that normally constrains the line.” The upper stage was still able to deploy its Starlink satellites, but at a lower altitude than planned. SpaceX couldn’t raise the satellites’ orbits fast enough to overcome the effect of atmospheric drag, and as a result, all 20 satellites re-entered the atmosphere and burned up harmlessly. It was the first failure of a Falcon 9 mission in eight years.
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