A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which was a day late due to inclement weather, orbited 60 Starlink Internet satellites from Cape Canaveral late Monday. An attempt to recover the first stage landing on an off-shore droneship failed, ending a string of 24 successes in a row.
A new Starlink launch, with an additional 60 satellites on board, is scheduled for early Wednesday from the nearby Kennedy Space Center, as SpaceX continues to build a global constellation designed to provide Internet access to customers around the world.
It is not yet known what impact the possible landing accident could have on Wednesday’s flight.
SpaceX Webcast
Monday’s flight got off to a spectacular start at 10:59 p.m. EST when the nine engines of the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage ignited with a burst of fire, pushing the 229-foot-tall booster away from Path 40 on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The engines generated 1.7 million pounds of thrust and pushed the rocket away on a northeast orbit, accelerating rapidly as they expended propellants and the vehicle lost weight.
After climbing out of the dense lower atmosphere, the first phase, making its sixth flight, separated and headed for landing on an off-shore droneship.
As usual, the booster fired three of its engines to slow down before plunging back into the lower atmosphere, but shutdown, seen in downlinked video, did not seem normal. A camera on the droneship later showed the glow of a landing “burning” on one side, but the booster never appeared and presumably fell into the nearby ocean.
William Harwood / CBS News
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t hold the landing today,” said SpaceX’s launch commentator, describing the loss as “a bummer.”
It was the first unsuccessful booster recovery for SpaceX since the sixth Starlink mission in March 2020. Since then, the California rocket builder has conducted 24 successful consecutive recoveries before Monday’s accident.
But the failed landing did not affect the outcome of Monday’s mission. Powered by a single vacuum motor, the Falcon 9’s second stage fired twice as planned to reach its planned orbit approximately 45 minutes after launch. The 60 Starlinks were released to fly independently about 20 minutes later.
SpaceX has now launched 1,145 Starlinks. The company has regulatory approval to launch more than 12,000 satellites, creating a network of relay stations that provide two-way Internet connectivity to customers around the world.