Fiery crash of SpaceX Falcon 9 booster results in FAA grounding rocket launches – again

The fiery crash of a booster off the coast of Florida has resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration launching an investigation to find the cause.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A fiery crash of a Falcon 9 booster safely off the coast of Florida resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounding the fleet as SpaceX will be tasked with identifying what went wrong before flying again. 

The rocket and satellite deployment during the early-Wednesday mission seemed to go off without a hitch, but the landing of the booster on the “A Shortfall of Gravitas” droneship went awry. 

Video captured the moment when the piece of the rocket crashed onto the deck during the recovery process.

“After a successful ascent, Falcon 9’s first stage booster tipped over following touchdown on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship. Teams are assessing the booster’s flight data and status. This was the booster’s 23rd launch,” SpaceX said after the incident.

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The news of an investigation is reminiscent of the grounding of the Falcon 9 rocket fleet over the summer, which followed the failure of nearly two dozen Starlink satellites to deploy properly in orbit.

The review lasted less than two weeks, during which SpaceX engineers identified a cracked sensor line, which they said led to the mission’s failure. 

The company has around 6,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit that provide customers with ground terminal receivers for high-speed internet access.

“A return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety,” the FAA said in a statement.

SPACEX RETURNS TO FLIGHT FOLLOWING FALCON 9 MISHAP INVESTIGATION

Neither the FAA nor SpaceX has publicly released guidance on how long they expect the temporary grounding to last. 

The failure has already led to the postponement of a Starlink mission from California and will likely cause further delays for the Polaris Dawn mission. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was expected to launch a crew of four for the first commercial spacewalk outside the International Space Station, but weather delayed the initial attempt earlier in the week.

Significant delays could extend into the fall when a Falcon 9 rocket was expected to launch a crew of two in what has essentially become a rescue mission to retrieve two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.

NASA recently decided that the uncertainties surrounding the operations of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft were too great to allow astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return home on that vehicle, leaving a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as the only available option for crew transport.