On Thursday, July 11, the US space exploration technology company SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket experienced a rare malfunction in space, endangering its payload of 20 Starlink satellites.
According to Reuters on Friday, the rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Thursday night and about an hour later, the second stage encountered engine problems, failing to reignite in space, resulting in the 20 Starlink satellites being placed into a much lower orbit than planned.
SpaceX posted on the social platform “X” on Friday that the satellites are still in the process of deployment but have entered the wrong orbit. “So far, contact has been made with 5 satellites,” and efforts are underway to use ion thrusters to raise their orbit.
In response, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated that the satellites’ thrusters have been ignited at maximum power, noting that “the satellite thrusters need to raise orbit faster than atmospheric drag, or they will burn up.”
Musk also mentioned that SpaceX is updating the software of the Starlink satellites to force the onboard thrusters to fire more aggressively than usual to prevent burning up when re-entering the atmosphere.
In a post on the X platform, Musk wrote, “Attempts to reignite engines in space resulted in an RUD of the engine, reasons currently unknown.” “RUD” stands for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly in the industry, which usually means an explosion.
While SpaceX is expanding its Starlink network coverage and collaborating with telecommunications companies to enable users to directly communicate with satellites via mobile phones, the successful deployment of satellites is crucial. This launch included 13 satellites with the new “Direct Hive” feature, allowing them to connect to unmodified smartphones.
The engine ignition failure occurred during the 354th mission of Falcon 9 and was the first failure since 2016. Tom Mueller, the former Vice President of Engineering at SpaceX who designed the engine, commented on X, stating, “We knew this incredible streak of consecutive successful flights had to end at some point, but 344 successful flights in a row were amazing! The team will resolve the issue and start anew.”
Since 2018, SpaceX has launched around 7,000 different design Starlink satellites into space for global broadband internet.
Industry analysts estimate that the 20 satellites onboard this mission are collectively worth at least ten million dollars.
Falcon 9 is the world’s most active rocket, and this failure has disrupted SpaceX’s impressive record of successful launches. Many countries and space companies rely on SpaceX to send satellites and astronauts into space.