by SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket after the vehicle encountered a problem during the launch of the Crew-9 astronaut for NASA.
Crew-9 lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday (September 28), sending NASA astronaut Nick Haag and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the Crew Dragon capsule ‘Freedom’.
Everything seemed to be going well. The Falcon 9’s first stage landed shortly after takeoff, and the rocket’s upper stage placed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) as planned on Sunday afternoon (September 29).
Following today’s successful launch of Crew-9, the Falcon 9 second stage was deployed into the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-rated burn. As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside the target area. We are resuming the launch after…September 29, 2024
But the upper stage experienced a problem after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning.
“Following today’s successful launch of Crew-9, the Falcon 9 second stage deployed into the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-target burn. As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside the target area We will resume launch once we better understand the cause,” SpaceX wrote in a post on X.
Related: SpaceX Crew-9 astronaut mission: live updates
Indeed, a Falcon 9 was scheduled to launch twenty broadband satellites for the Eutelsat OneWeb company from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday evening, but that launch has been postponed.
The Crew-9 incident was the second upper-stage Falcon 9 problem to occur in less than three months. On July 11, the rocket suffered a liquid oxygen leak in the upper stage while launching 20 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites. As a result, the spacecraft was deployed too low and was ultimately lost.
SpaceX traced that anomaly to a cracked line for a pressure sensor in the upper stage’s liquid oxygen system. The Falcon 9 returned to flight after just two weeks, flying a mission on July 27.
The rocket was grounded again after a first stage failed to land successfully during an August 28 mission that otherwise went well. This pause was even shorter: the Falcon 9 flew two successful missions just three days later and also held the landings.
Crew 9 sends The Hague and Gorbunov to the ISS for a stay of approximately five months. The duo will return to Earth in February, along with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived at the groundbreaking laboratory aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule in June.
Starliner came home without them earlier this month; the capsule had thrust problems in orbit, and NASA ultimately deemed a crewed return to Earth with the spacecraft too risky. So the agency changed Crew-9’s manifesto, removing two astronauts from the launch to make room for Wilmore and Williams on Freedom for the down leg.
