SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is currently grounded

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is currently grounded. This rocket, which is the workhorse of the global space industry, can’t fly.

Here’s what happened on a recent Falcon 9 flight, why the FAA has grounded the rocket, and when SpaceX might be flying the Falcon 9 again.

The problem during flight: A propellant leak

On July 11, 2024, SpaceX was conducting a routine launch of its Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This mission was yet another flight to deploy 20 Starlink satellites for the company’s satellite internet constellation — the bulk of Falcon 9 flights are for Starlink satellites, so these have become pretty routine.

The launch went well, stage separation was nominal, and the first stage returned to Earth and landed on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. The second stage continued into space with its Merlin vacuum engine, but during its ascent, viewers on the broadcast noticed something: ice building up on the rocket and falling off in chunks.

This wasn’t normal, and many speculated that there might be a liquid oxygen leak — liquid oxygen is a propellant for the rocket, along with rocket-grade kerosene.

The livestream cut off before SpaceX confirmed that the second engine burn for the upper stage had ignited properly. There no was no confirmation of a second burn, and no celebration that the satellites had been properly deployed.

Well, SpaceX announced that the rocket was not able to complete its second burn, which was supposed to start about 52 minutes after liftoff, and the Starlink satellites were deployed in a lower orbit than intended.

On their website, SpaceX later confirmed that the culprit here was a liquid oxygen propellant leak on the second stage. They outlined the steps they took to save the Starlink satellites and confirmed they won’t be able to save them.

The FAA’s investigation into the anomaly

But the Starlink satellites aren’t the concern here — it’s the rocket.

The Falcon 9 is the workhorse of the global space industry. If you look at the statistics for 2023, according to Jonathan McDowell’s yearly space activity report, there were 223 orbital launch attempts in 2023. 109 of them were from the U.S. And 91 of those were the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Sure, most of the Falcon 9 flights are internal — for Starlink. But a lot of commercial, governmental, and military space relies on the Falcon 9. Too much, frankly, relies on the Falcon 9. If nothing else, this experience is demonstrating why NASA is committed to having multiple launch providers and spacecraft — too much dependence on any single provider can bring things to a screeching halt if there’s an anomaly during a mission, as we’re experiencing right now.

So, what happens now?

Well, if you’ve followed my Starship coverage at all, you know by now that for any launch that doesn’t go according to mission plans, the FAA immediately opens a mishap investigation into the flight.

According to the FAA, there are nine events that will lead to the opening of a mishap investigation for any commercial launch:

• implementing its mishap plan;

• activating emergency response services as necessary to protect public safety and property;

• containing and minimizing the consequences of a mishap;

• preserving data and physical evidence for later investigation;

• reporting the mishap to the FAA's Washington Operations Center; and

• filing a preliminary written report to the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation within five (5) days of the event.

As you can see, it’s pretty broad — we’re focusing in here on the last one “failure to complete a launch or re-entry as planned.”

This honestly wasn’t a huge incident — the loss of some Starlink satellites isn’t a big deal, they can just make some new ones and they will, but the larger issue is — what is the problem with the ROCKET, and how can we be sure this problem won’t happen again — say if there are humans on the flight? The goal of a mishap investigation is to identify what went wrong and then highlight corrective actions that need to be taken.

Until the FAA has a satisfactory answer to this, and the corrective actions have been implemented, the organization will not issue a launch license for the rocket, which effectively means that the Falcon 9 is grounded.

Now there’s some flexibility here in terms of the mishap investigation — the FAA can conduct its own investigation, or SpaceX can do it themselves. The FAA can also coordinate with the NTSB, NASA, and the Space Force.

Mishap investigations can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months (or even longer) to conclude, based on how complicated the problem is. An oxygen leak is not an overly complicated problem, as long as SpaceX understands why the leak occurred.

How long will the FAA take to conduct their investigations

No one wants to compromise safety. I want to emphasize that. But these mishap investigations can take awhile, so SpaceX is now arguing that they should be able to fly before the FAA has closed their mishap investigation. This is according to Will Robinson-Smith at Spaceflight Now — the FAA told him that SpaceX submitted a request on July 15 to return to flight as soon as possible. The organization confirmed it is reviewing the request.

SpaceX did something similar with Starship’s fourth test flight, and they succeeded. With that flight, SpaceX argued that both stages did re-enter within their specified zones for IFT-3 and there was no danger to public safety, so the FAA didn’t actually need to close their investigation into Flight 3 to issue the license for Flight 4. And that’s what happened. They got the license.

But this is a little more complicated. Starship is an uncrewed test flight. Falcon 9s….aren’t necessarily.

There are two launches in particular I’m thinking about here. Polaris Dawn, a private crewed mission which will be the first EVA, or spacewalk, from a commercial spacecraft, is scheduled for liftoff no earlier than July 31. And NASA’s Crew-9 mission is currently targeted for mid-August. Both of these flights are on board a Falcon 9, and both have the potential to be seriously delayed.

As an aside — this is exactly why NASA wanted two providers for commercial crew, which are the flights to take astronauts to and from the ISS. I’ve gotten so many questions and mean comments about this in my coverage of the Boeing Starliner crewed flight test — which, yes, the astronauts are still on the ISS, yes this mission is a mess.

But right now, because the Falcon 9 is grounded, there is no ability to launch new astronauts to the ISS for the U.S. Starliner isn’t operational yet, which means if NASA needed to launch a relief crew in a hurry for some reason — or launch a rescue mission for Butch and Suni (which to be clear is not a thing that’s being considered at the moment) — they would have to turn to Russia.

Now it’s likely if this problem had happened when there were astronauts on board, it would have been ok. The mission would have failed if the first burn hadn’t completed successfully because of the oxygen leak. But a Crew Dragon launch doesn’t require a second burn for a flight to the ISS — but Polaris Dawn, which will be placed in a higher orbit, might.

Ok, but when will the Falcon 9 fly again?

The FAA could accept SpaceX’s reasoning and allow them to fly again as soon as this week. On one hand, that would be understandable. Even with this failure, Falcon 9’s track record is phenomenal. The first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, which is the current configuration of the launch vehicle, launched in May 2018. There have been 298 Falcon 9 launches since then. 297 of them have been successful. This is a 99.66 percent success rate. By any metric that’s phenomenal. Even with this failure, this is an incredibly reliable rocket.

That being said, it is important that the FAA actually regulate the companies it’s supposed to. There’s no need to ground the Falcon 9 if the organization doesn’t see a good reason to — if the issue is simple, and the fix is easy, then let them fly. But if there’s any shadow of a doubt there, the investigation piece is very important.

And there’s the matter of SpaceX’s customers here. SpaceX is fortunate in that it has its own payloads — Starlink satellites — so it can demonstrate a few successful missions before it flies astronauts or any commercial satellites. Restoring that trust is very important.

We’ll see what happens here. It’s not clear when the Falcon 9 rockets will fly again, but until it does, there will be serious ramifications across the launch industry.