(Credit: Spaceflight Now)
UPDATE: The FAA confirmed it's grounding Falcon 9 flights as it investigates the incident to prevent it from happening again.
"The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 8-6 mission that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on August 28," the agency said. "The incident involved the failure of the Falcon 9 booster rocket while landing on a droneship at sea. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation."
Original story:
SpaceX is facing a new mishap with its Falcon 9 rocket, over a month after a separate rocket malfunctioned during its ascent into space.
This time, a reusable Falcon 9 rocket failed to stick the landing on its return back to Earth, tipping over and bursting into flames.
The rocket successfully lifted off early Wednesday morning, hauling 21 Starlink satellites. Its second stage carried the Starlink satellites into orbit, but the Falcon 9’s first stage booster, which is designed to land on a SpaceX drone ship at sea, missed the mark.
Footage of the incident shows the rocket successfully landing upright. But then the first stage booster gradually tips over as it burns rocket fuel, creating a blaze over the landing site.
In a tweet, SpaceX confirmed the incident. "Teams are assessing the booster's flight data and status. This was the booster's 23rd launch," it said. The company is also postponing a second Starlink launch today as it investigates the landing failure.
The Federal Aviation Administration didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the agency might force SpaceX to ground Falcon 9 flights pending the results of an official investigation. That's what happened last month when a separate Falcon 9 rocket, specifically the second stage, failed to properly deploy a batch of Starlink satellites due to a liquid oxygen leak. SpaceX had to ground Falcon 9 flights for about two weeks before receiving FAA approval to resume the launches.
Wednesday’s incident might also impact the Polaris Dawn mission, which will use a Falcon 9 rocket to send four civilian astronauts into space. The mission was originally supposed to take off this Tuesday, but bad weather in Florida has forced SpaceX to delay the launch.
Still, the malfunctions represent a rarity for the Falcon 9 rocket, which has successfully completed over 360 missions. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk signaled his company will use the latest incident to improve the rocket's reliability.
"Now we figure out what went wrong to drive the landing failure rate far above 1 in a thousand, then 1 in 10 thousand … 1 in a milion, etc," he tweeted.