A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is launched in May, carrying 23 Starlink satellites. REUTERS The mishap occurred on Falcon 9’s 354th mission. It was the first Falcon 9 failure since 2016, when a rocket exploded on a launch pad in Florida and destroyed its customer payload, an Israeli communications satellite. “We knew this incredible run had to come to an end at some point,” Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s former vice president of propulsion who designed Falcon 9’s engines, replied to Musk on X. .”.. The team will fix the problem and start the cycle again.” Impact on SpaceX’s launch business The failure will likely stymie SpaceX’s intensifying launch pace for the Falcon 9. The rocket’s 96 launches last year were its most to date and exceeded the annual launch total in any country. By comparison, China, an increasingly competitive space rival to the US, launched 67 missions to space in 2023 using various rockets. “It is extremely rare for Falcon to fail. They have a much better rate than almost any other rocket developed in terms of the success of their mission,” said Will Whitehorn, chair of the venture capital firm Seraphim Space Investment Trust. The attempt to reignite the engine in space “resulted in an engine RUD [Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly] for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X. REUTERS Although Thursday night’s Falcon 9 flight was an in-house mission, the rocket’s grounding is likely to impact the company’s upcoming customer missions. Falcon 9 is the only US rocket capable of sending NASA crews to the International Space Station. The space agency was expecting to launch its next astronaut mission in August, with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut capsule launching atop the rocket. NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has been trying to help fix unrelated problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which is in the midst of a high-stakes test mission to prove it can become NASA’s second astronaut ride to orbit alongside Crew Dragon. Upper stage engine of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which blasted off from California on Thursday. AP SpaceX was poised to launch as early as July 31 its Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon mission sending four private astronauts into orbit for a few days to conduct the first commercial spacewalk using the company’s newly designed spacesuits. Jared Isaacman, head of the Polaris program and a crew member on the mission, said he expects SpaceX to quickly recover from the failure. “As for Polaris Dawn, we will fly whenever SpaceX is ready and with complete confidence in the rocket, spaceship and operations,” Isaacman wrote on X. Musk replied that “we will investigate the issue and look for any other potential near-misses.” SpaceX has launched about 7,000 Starlink satellites of various designs into space since 2018 for its global broadband internet network. Industry analysts have said the satellites on Thursday’s mission could be worth at least $10 million combined. Filed under