SpaceX has quickly grounded its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which is slated to launch 4 astronauts simply eight days from now.
A Falcon 9 delivered 25 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) as deliberate on Monday (Feb. 2). However, after deploying the payloads, the rocket’s higher stage did not carry out its deorbit burn, which was designed to deliver it down for managed destruction in Earth’s ambiance.
The Falcon 9 is the world’s busiest rocket by far. It launched a record-breaking 165 occasions in 2025 and already has 14 liftoffs till its belt this 12 months.
The rocket is extremely dependable, too. All of final 12 months’s missions had been profitable, and only a single one — a Starlink launch on March 3 — skilled a major anomaly. On that flight, a Falcon 9 first stage toppled shortly after touchdown on a ship at sea and was destroyed. (The booster did its job within the upward path, and the 21 Starlink satellites had been deployed into LEO as deliberate.)
SpaceX halted Falcon 9 launches for every week whereas it investigated that situation, which was traced to a gasoline leak in one of many booster’s 9 Merlin engines. This leak led to a fireplace shortly after landing, which weakened a touchdown leg and brought about the automobile to tip over.
It is unclear how lengthy this new launch hiatus will final. However each SpaceX and NASA probably hope the problem is resolved quickly, for a really high-profile Falcon 9 launch is arising — that of the Crew-12 astronaut mission to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS).
Crew-12 is presently scheduled to launch on Feb. 11 from Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station in Florida. That is 4 days sooner than initially deliberate: SpaceX and NASA fast-tracked Crew-12, as a result of it’s going to get the ISS again to its regular complement of seven crewmembers.
The orbiting lab has been staffed by a skeleton crew of three since Jan. 15, when the 4 astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-11 left (a month sooner than deliberate) within the first-ever medical evacuation from the ISS.
NASA is maintaining a detailed eye on the Falcon 9 investigation, which SpaceX is conducting together with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“We do have our groups with Industrial Crew embedded in that investigation,” NASA Affiliate Administrator Amit Kshatriya stated on Tuesday, throughout a press convention that mentioned Monday’s fueling check of the company’s Artemis 2 moon rocket, which ended early as a result of a propellant leak.
“We’re urgent in direction of our Crew-12 window,” he added. “We’re planning in direction of, you realize, only a week, just a little bit greater than every week from now, to begin that preparation. However once more, that is going to be contingent on the return-to-flight rationale, [on] which we’re closely partnered with each the FAA and SpaceX.”
And about that wayward Falcon 9 higher stage: Although it didn’t come again to Earth in a managed style as deliberate on Monday, it did handle to “passivate” itself by venting propellant, in response to SpaceX.
This maneuver lowered its perigee, or closest level to Earth, to 68.4 miles (110 kilometers), in response to satellite tv for pc tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell.
“It’ll reenter rapidly,” McDowell stated by way of X on Monday night time.
