SpaceX has put a pause on Falcon 9 launches after reporting the second stage of the rocket used in Crew-9 suffered an anomaly.
The Falcon 9′s second stage experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn and landed in the ocean outside of its target area, SpaceX said early Sunday on social media.
The California-based private space flight company said the launches would resume once it better understands the root cause of the problem, adding the disposal of the Falcon 9′s second stage was done safely and had otherwise gone as planned.
After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.
We will resume launching after we…
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 29, 2024
SpaceX and NASA’s launch of Crew-9 Saturday sent astronauts Nick Hague and Alex Gorbunov to the International Space Station.
[WATCH AGAIN: NASA, SpaceX launch Crew-9 mission to space station]
It’s now the third time in three months that there will be a break in between SpaceX launches.
On July 11, a liquid oxygen leak from an upper stage created ice on a rocket and grounded Falcon 9 rockets for just over two weeks.
Then on Aug. 28, it only took three days before the FAA let SpaceX fly again when during a landing, the first stage of a Falcon 9 tipped over and burst into flames.
In a news conference Saturday at Kennedy Space Center after the Crew-9 launch, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management spoke about overcoming technical failures.
”We still learn something every single time we fly,” Sarah Walker said. “We’ve had our share of hardware challenges that the NASA teams have been incredible to work through with us.”
Some upcoming SpaceX launches have strict time constraints because the missions are interplanetary.
The European Space Agency wants to launch a Falcon 9 to study an asteroid system that a spacecraft crashed into during the DART planetary defense mission.
The Hera mission has a launch window between Oct. 7 – 25.
Then, NASA’s $5 billion Europa Clipper mission will launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket to Jupiter moon’s Europa which is believed to have a saltwater ocean on its surface.
Europa Clipper’s launch window runs from Oct. 10 to Nov. 6.
“They have very short planetary windows,” CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood said. “They have to get off within those windows, or these missions would face a significant delay.”
This week at Cape Canaveral, a Starlink launch was planned for Wednesday, but it now looks like the next local launch could be the second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur.
After its maiden launch in January, Vulcan’s second flight could be Friday morning at 6 a.m.
Monday, ULA rolled the 200-foot rocket to its launch pad.
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