US FAA Grounds SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Due to Second-Stage Malfunction – Reuters

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has mandated that SpaceX conduct an investigation into the malfunction of the second stage of its Falcon 9 rocket, which occurred following a NASA astronaut mission on Saturday. This incident has led to the rocket being grounded for the third time in three months.

After successfully launching two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, the rocket’s second stage failed to perform a crucial engine relight during its "deorbit burn"—an essential procedure for safely discarding the booster into the ocean after its mission.

Despite the issue with the booster, the astronaut crew reached the ISS without incident, docking on Sunday as scheduled. The FAA confirmed that there were no injuries or damage linked to the failure of the booster.

The malfunction resulted in the booster landing in a portion of the Pacific Ocean that was beyond the designated safety zone approved by the FAA for the mission. SpaceX acknowledged that the booster "experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn," leading to a safe, yet off-target landing in the ocean.

"We will resume launching after we better understand the root cause," SpaceX stated in a post on X.

This incident marks the third grounding of the Falcon 9 in just three months, a notable shift as previous groundings had been uncommon for the rocket, which is pivotal for space access in much of the Western world.

The rocket was first grounded in July following a second-stage malfunction that resulted in a batch of SpaceX-built Starlink satellites veering onto a destructive orbital path, marking the company’s first mission failure in over seven years. SpaceX resumed Falcon 9 flights just 15 days later.

In August, another grounding occurred when a Falcon 9 first stage failed to return to Earth, but this did not affect the overall success of the mission. The company returned to flight three days after that incident.