FAA grounds Falcon 9 after SpaceX booster lands on droneship, falls

A mission to send 21 Starlink satellites into space did have an issue when a booster rocket did not successfully return to a SpaceX droneship.

A Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Florida Space Coast Wednesday morning to add nearly two dozen satellites to SpaceX’s global high-speed internet network.

Update 2:29 p.m. ET, Aug. 28: The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded the Falcon 9 rocket after Wednesday’s incident, Reuters reported.

“The incident involved the failure of the Falcon 9 booster rocket while landing on a droneship at sea. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation,” an agency spokesperson said.

The grounding of the Falcon 9 could delay the Polaris Dawn mission which was supposed to launch this week. The rocket is also supposed to launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft in September which will bring home the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.

This is the second time in two months that the rocket has been grounded, CNN reported. It is not known how long the rocket will be grounded.

Original report: When the first stage booster returned to Earth, it fell over after touchdown on a droneship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean, WFTV reported.

The moment it landed can be seen at 14:23 in the clip below or on X.com. A large fireball is seen at 14:25, and then the rocket booster tips over quickly.

It was the booster’s 23rd launch.

A second launch was planned for 5:58 a.m. ET from California, but that was scrubbed to allow crews to look at the data that could indicate why the return of the booster failed, CBS News reported.

Earlier in the morning SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission was scheduled to launch but was scrubbed because of the weather. That mission will take a four-person civilian crew to the Van Allen radiation belts to hold the first commercial spacewalk, CNN reported.

© 2024 Cox Media Group